Non-Fiction Prefaces, forewords & introductions

TalkWorks - 1997 The ideas in this book draw on the work of many leading international experts, who between them represent a vast body of accumulated expertise on interpersonal communication. They also come from discussions held with hundreds of ordinary people throughout the country. § 1 A book that can help change your life. It's hard to think of a single, important aspect of life that doesn't involve talking and listening. Almost everything we do depends on conversation. It's how we plan and organise our lives. § 2 It's how we build friendships and get close to people. It's how we get to understand how other people feel and sometimes discover important things about ourselves. It's how we influence people and allow them to influence us. § 3 It's how we sort out problems, co-operate with each other and create new opportunities. Conversation is at the very heart of our lives. So it makes sense to be as good as we can at having conversations that work out for the best. § 4 This book explains how you can get more out of life by improving the way you relate to people through your everyday conversations. A lot of the anxiety, frustration and ‘people problems’ we encounter as we go through life have their roots in poor communication. § 5 By getting better at how we understand and deal with other people, life can improve in many different ways. As we hope you'll discover, even a few small changes can make a big difference. § 6 The principles of good communication are based on common sense. We all communicate well some of the time and in certain situations. By becoming more aware of what happens during satisfying effective conversations, you can learn to apply your skills more consistently across a wider range of circumstances. § 7 It's mainly a question of building on your existing understanding of human nature and putting that extra bit of effort into communicating well.

Why do kids do that? Introduction You want the best for your child, you want other children and adults to like her, and you want her to get on well with her peers. Yet her behaviour doesn’t happen by chance: the way your child interacts with others depends on a combination of different influences, including her personality, her abilities and talents, and the way she is brought up by you at home. § 1 This book can help you as a parent to raise your child to become the wonderful person you want her to be. However, it is not a recipe book for success or a checklist of boxes to be ticked — rather, it is a guide to the theory and practice of child behaviour, to give you a better understanding of what makes your growing child tick and how you can support her. § 2 Positive Parenting There is no doubt that raising a child is demanding for much of the time. The minute you solve one problem, another emerges; the minute one crisis is over, another one arises. No wonder the pressures of managing your child’s behaviour effectively get you down occasionally. § 3 This book takes a positive approach to these very real problems, by encouraging you to look for solutions to the difficulties your child poses instead of focusing only on blame. It suggests techniques for preventing challenging behaviour, rather than concentrating purely on how to deal with difficult behaviour when it arises, and offers advice on building a strong, loving relationship with your child rather than dealing only with repairing the damage. § 4 This positive parenting approach will boost your self-confidence as a parent and develop your belief in your own effectiveness. A happy, confident child will enjoy life’s opportunities and cope with its challenges. How This Book Works § 5 This book deals with the common – and some less common – challenges facing today’s parents, such as how to establish discipline at home with your growing child, the fair and reasonable use of rewards and punishments, giving to your child without spoiling her, and teaching her self-control. § 6 A wide range of other topics relevant to children from babyhood up to 8 years old are also covered, including eating habits and healthy diets, how to achieve stress-free bedtime routines, keeping your child busy and developing strong sibling relationships. § 7 Issues such as childhood fears and toddler tantrums are discussed, and strategies are suggested for developing the optimist in your child and helping her to make friends. Throughout, the book is packed with practical advice, top tips and information charts for quick and easy reference. § 8 Maintaining Perspective As a parent, you need to be realistic. Do not expect too much of yourselt or your child. Of course you have high expectations of your child's behaviour, but remember that although a great deal of childhood behaviour Is challenging, It is normal, all the same. § 9 For instance, toddler tantrums are common when your child is around 2 years old. At that age, unexpected explosions of temper are typical and they are extremely difficult to manage. Yet the fact that these episodes of rage are normal should reassure you that your child’s behaviour is neither your fault not hers, but simply a combination of circumstances. § 10 Rather than allowing self-recrimination to flourish, it ts better to look for positive solutions. The same applies to many other aspects of child behaviour. Take shyness, for example. You may find that your 4-year-old chats excitedly about her best friend’s party every single day in the weeks before it and is thrilled with the new dress you have bought her just for this occasion. § 11 She even takes delight in choosing her friend’s birthday present. Yet the moment she arrives at her friend’s house for the party itself she freezes, bursts out crying and refuses to cross the threshold. This sudden onset of shyness is challenging, but again it is normal. § 12 Fortunately, there is lots you can do to help your child overcome this temporary social hurdle. This book will help you to understand your child’s emotional, social and behavioural needs, enabling you to support her at all stages so that you do not expect too much. § 13 Suggested goals are realistic and attainable. This will allow you to keep a balanced perspective on parenting, irrespective of any pressures you may experience. Loving parental support gives a child a great start as she learns to deal with the wider world. § 14 How to Use This Book Use the book in a way that suits you. You could read it from cover to cover, or your attention could be drawn to specific chapters that are relevant to your child right now. Alternatively, you could use it as a reference book, depending on her stage of development. § 15 However you use this book, you and your child will benefit from your deeper understanding of her needs and how you can help her as she grows. – Dr Richard C. Woolfson, 2004

Influence How to make the system work for you Preface Princes who have achieved great things have been those who have given their word lightly, who have known how to trick men with their cunning, and who, in the end, have overcome those abiding by honest principles. – Niccolo Machiavelli § 1 Niccolo Machiavelli (1469-1527) has always had a bad press. It is generally recognized that Old Nick as a term for the Devil is derived from his name. Considered the archetypal devious diplomat who argued that the end justifies the means, he was in reality a very practical if sceptical man. § 2 He stirs up strong views — it is difficult to be impartial about him. Ever the political theorist, Machiavelli is for some the teacher of evil; for others he is a first-class technician, the supreme realist. § 3 His wish was to uphold orderly government and the rule of law rather than, as is often claimed, to enable a corrupt prince to hold on to power. He was above all pragmatic in his advice on how to lead, setting out, to quote Bacon, ‘to demonstrate what people are wont to do and not what they ought to do.’ § 4 The Prince, along with his other writings, is not a blueprint for this book, but has had a seminal influence on it. Apart from when in pursuit of some obscure quotation, I have used no other books or references. Very Male-Chauvinist Note § 5 Throughout this book, try as I might, the occasional masculine pronoun has crept in and has been retained for simplicity’s sake. But when ‘he’ or ‘him’ are used alone, please remember Churchill’s remark that, when talking of mankind, he always thought of ‘man’ as embracing women. § 6 Introduction All rising to a great place is by a winding stair. – Francis Bacon There are many books on the market about top people, what they do and how they got there. Although this book will certainly help those who want to reach the summit, it is the first book, so far as I am aware, that is aimed at those who enjoy working behind the scenes, the indispensable right hands of those in positions of apparent power. § 7 This book will demonstrate that: 1 the top is very small; 2 the anterooms on the way to the top are also small; 3 power is never what it seems; 4 responsibility (i.e. formal position) without power is very common; § 8 5 you do not have to be born with influence - you can train yourself to acquire it; 6 there is always a system to be worked. My approach is to challenge conventional thinking about power and to suggest certain tools which, if handled well, can improve the chances of success of those who would be influential. § 9 For top people from all walks of life have individuals – I call them “influents” – working on them: private secretaries, advisers, speech-writers, gurus, spouses, lovers, hairdressers, chauffeurs. § 10 I wish to explain why, in modern society, the alert analyst of decision-making patterns looks first at the president’s, prime minister’s or tycoon’s right-hand man or woman, for that is where the action is. This book, then, is a manual for those who wish to wield influence in business, government and society. Michael Shea, 1988

Principles of Language Learning & Teaching PREFACE WHEN THE first edition of Principles of Language Learning and Teaching appeared in 1980, the field of second language acquisition (SLA) was relatively manageable. § 1 We had a handful of professional journals devoted to SLA, a good collection of anthologies and conference proceedings, a small but respectable number of books on SLA and teaching, and a budding community of researchers devoted to the field. § 2 Today the field of SLA has a mind-boggling number of branches and subfields and specializations—so many that it is virtually impossible for one person to “manage” them all. § 3 In the most recent issue of Language Teaching, an abstracting journal covering SLA and its pedagogical implications and applications, 162 periodicals were listed as potential sources of research on SLA. § 4 In two recent Handbooks surveying research on second language acquisition (Doughty & Long, 2003; Hinkel, 2005), readers are treated to over 2000 pages and over 70 chapters of surveys of current research! § 5 All these publications, coupled with literally thousands of conference presentations annually on SLA worldwide and an impressive number of books, now cover dozens of major subject matter areas. § 6 From “A to Z”—Accent to the Zone of proximal development—SLA is a rich and diverse field of inquiry. Today we can see that the manageable stockpile of research of just a few decades ago has been replaced by a coordinated, systematic storehouse of information. § 7 Subfields have been defined and explored. Researchers around the world are meeting, talking, exchanging findings, comparing data, and arriving at some mutually acceptable explanations. § 8 A remarkable number of respectable, refereed journals are printing the best and most interesting of this research. Our research miscarriages are fewer as we have collectively learned how to conceive the right questions. § 9 On the other hand, the mysteries and wonder of human language acquisition still perplex of the best of our sleuthing minds. It is a rare research report that does not end with some sort of caveat like, “more research is needed.” § 10 In the 888-page compendium edited by Doughty and Long (2003), The Handbook of Second Language Acquisition, the penultimate author’s closing sentence reads: “It is hardly surprising, though, that theoretical and methodological problems still abound; SLA is a newly merging scientific field, and problems come with the territory” (Gregg, 2003, p. 856). § 11 PURPOSE AND AUDIENCE Since its first publication in 1980, Principles of Language Learning and Teaching, here in its fifth edition, has served a number of purposes for many audiences around the world. § 12 For graduates or advanced undergraduates in language teacher education programs, it is a textbook on the theoretical foundations of language teaching, a survey of what research has revealed about how human beings acquire a second language. § 13 For a surprising number of people it has become a book that Master’s degree candidates pore over in preparation for the SLA section of their Comprehensive Examinations or for references for their thesis research. § 14 For experienced teachers, it has become a handbook that provides an overview of current issues in the field with an index and bibliographic entries to aid in that overview. For the most part, you do not need to have prior technical knowledge of linguistics or psychology in order to comprehend this book. § 15 An attempt has been made to build, from the beginning, on what an educated person knows about the world, life, people, and communication. And the book can be used in programs for educating teachers of any foreign language, even though many illustrative examples here are in English since that is the language common to all readers. § 16 CHANGES IN THE FIFTH EDITION The first question people ask me when they hear that a new edition is about to appear is,“What changes will you make?” or from some students I hear, “Is the last edition really different from the current one?” In anticipation of these questions about the fifth edition, I offer the following highlights: § 17 1. New issues and topics. In a field growing as rapidly as ours, a period of six or seven years sees many advances. In a reflection of this growth, the current edition features a number of new topics, listed in capsulized form below, sequenced in the order they appear in chapters. § 18 • Vygotsky’s and Bakhtin’s theories; language teaching historical overview • Connectionism, emergentism, principles and parameters • Age-related evidence—new findings; order of acquisition—new research § 19 • Thorndike’s law of effect, language aptitude—new research, multiple intelligences—update • Kinesthetic style, autonomy, awareness, strategies-based instruction—new research § 20 • Attribution theory, self-efficacy, willingness to communicate, LCDH Gn anxiety research), Flow theory, orientations—new perspectives • Culture definitions—update, NESTs and non-NESTSs, linguistic imperialismnew perspectives § 21 • Corpus linguistics, contrastive rhetoric • Competition model, fossilization (stabilization) critique, noticing, attention, feedback types, recasts, uptake, frequency of input • “Hot topics” in SLA research, output hypothesis—new research, awareness § 22 2. Updates and new references. Other topics from the previous edition have been updated with new findings and new perspectives. Some of these updates are reflected in a reorganization of material within the chapters. § 23 And out of literally thousands of new articles, books, and chapters that have appeared since the last edition, I have added a selection of over 300 new bibliographic references that report the latest work in SLA. § 24 3. Permutation of Chapters 8 and 9. With recent emphases on the blending of linguistic factors with related macro-theories of SLA, a better logical continuity is provided by (1) connecting sociocultural factors (Chapter 7) with questions about communicative competence, pragmatics, and conversation analysis (formerly Chapter 9, now Chapter 8); and (2) connecting learner language, error analysis, and form-focused instruction (formerly Chapter 8, now Chapter 9) with overall theoretical perspectives (Chapter 10). § 25 4, Amalgamation of pedagogical (methodological) implications. Users of the previous edition have suggested that the end-of-chapter vignettes on methodology be amalgamated into the text. § 26 I have followed this suggestion by incorporating methodological concerns and issues into appropriate chapters. So for example, Chapter 4, which covers learning theories, now has a new section on two learning theory-inspired methods that were in stark contrast: the Audiolingual Method, and Community Language Learning. § 27 5. New “Classroom Connections.” Another way to bridge what might still be too much of a gap between research findings and classroom praxis is now featured in periodic capsules called “Classroom Connections.” § 28 Here, the reader is reminded of a research issue that is being discussed, and on the same page is referred to some thoughts about how such research may have implications or applications for language classroom pedagogy. § 29 6. Glossary of technical terminology. Throughout the book, new terminology that is central to the study of second language acquisition is boldfaced in its first appearance. § 30 To provide the reader with a convenient reference to all such terms, this Fifth Edition features a glossary of technical terminology at the end of the book. I suggest that such a lexicon become a tool for reminders and review rather than a method of long-term internalization of concepts. § 31 Retention is always better served by embedding terminology into concurrent reading and by association with one’s experience, and not by the rote memorization of endless lists of jargon. ADDITIONAL FEATURES § 32 7. Classroom-oriented end-of-chapter exercises. In previous editions, the end-of-chapter exercises were designed for individual contemplation and possibly for teachers to adapt to classroom discussion. § 33 In this edition, new and improved classroom-tested exercises are explicitly designed for in-class group work, pair work, whole-class discussion, and individual work. Accessible suggestions for further reading. § 34 In this edition the suggestions for further reading target an audience of students just beginning in the field of SLA. Few esoteric, technical articles are listed, and instead students are led to more reader-friendly material. § 35 9. Journal guidelines for a language learning experience. I have always recommended that the information in a book like this is best internalized if the reader is concurrently taking a course in a foreign language. § 36 At the end of each chapter in this edition is a new section that offers classroom-tested journal-writing guidelines for the reader either to reflect on a current experience learning another language or to take a retrospective look at a previous foreign language learning experience. § 37 In both cases, the reader is asked to apply concepts and constructs and models to a personal experience learning a foreign language. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS This book has grown out of graduate courses in second language acquisition that I have taught at San Francisco State University, the University of Illinois, and the University of Michigan. § 38 My first debt of gratitude is therefore to my students—for their insights, enthusiasm, and support. They offered invaluable comments on the first four editions of the book, and I have attempted to incorporate those insights into this fifth edition. § 39 I always learn so much from my students! I am also grateful to faculty colleagues both here at San Francisco State University, at the American Language Institute, and around the world for offering verbal commentary, informal written opinion, and formal published reviews, all of which were useful in fashioning this fifth edition. § 40 I also want to thank the publisher’s anonymous reviewers for constructive feedback and encouragement. Finally, on a personal note, my wife, Mary, and I have this past year just become first-time grandparents—Carson William Brown, born to Jeff and Christina Brown in 2004. § 41 So readers can look forward to the sixth edition in which Carson’s budding first language acquisition skills will be well documented! And I of course want to say yet another huge thank you to Mary once again for being so patiently supportive of a cranky, driven author as I churned out this fifth edition, – H. Douglas Brown, San Francisco California, 2006

Healing Storytelling The Art of Imagination and Storymaking for Personal Growth Dedication This book is dedicated with loving gratitude to the late Adam and Gisela Bittleston, to my family, and to the many individuals and families I have met along my journey who have helped me to find my way. § 1 I am deeply indebted to many inspiring people who are connected with the international Waldorf School Movement. Foreword For thousands of years, story making and storytelling have been integral to our humanity. § 2 More than a source of entertainment, stories in every culture have taught moral and history lessons to adults and children alike, and kept complex traditions alive. Through story language we have learnt about the mountains and the forests, the earth and the sea, the stars and the moon, and those who came before us. § 3 It is often through storytelling and the art of the imagination that fears have been faced, and hurdles overcome. Meeting challenges, big and small, by tapping into imaginative narrative is natural and unique to us as a human species. § 4 Yet as Nancy Mellon points out in her introduction to this book, our modern imaginations are often broken, warped and fearful. Especially now in our modern fast-paced age, so obsessively dominated by the internet and other virtual experiences, we need stories to help us to create authentic relationships with ourselves and one another. § 5 This book offers a feast of ideas that inspires the reader to slow down and develop healthy imaginations and wholesome real-life story interactions. A manual for personal and group creativity, it is a wonderful healing resource. § 6 Stories can soothe our souls, and touch our hearts. They can change our perspectives, motivate and strengthen us on many levels as they bridge unseen and visible worlds and connect us to all life. Indigenous communities worldwide hold a deep respect for their sacred healing capacity. § 7 Nancy details a rich supply of examples from her healing work with both adults and children. The author insists that every human being is born a storyteller, and that our troubles are fuel for genuine transformations to occur. § 8 She shares how imaginative story making has helped multitudes of others, as well as herself, to transform personal challenges. An anecdote the author shares that speaks deeply to me is a story she wrote one spring morning called The Flower Hater. § 9 Her mother did not want flowers in the house because they reminded her of her mother’s funeral when she was a child. Nancy, now an avid gardener, was able to lift away a shadow that had been hovering all her life. § 10 She states, ‘Writing the story was like a healing dream. I was liberated through respecting the truth of my imagination.’ Many more such intimate sharings from Nancy’s life and the lives of her students of all ages are woven into the pages of every chapter. § 11 All were eager to experiment with the healing power of story making. My own imagination has been deliciously nourished by reading the range of inspirational anecdotes and exercises in this book that can be applied with courageous intention as healing salves to a multitude of ills. § 12 Stories are as important to our soul life as water is to our well-being. They can revive, and rejuvenate; they are vital for healthy growth and development; they find their way into our hearts, and our very being. § 13 This book is a shining wellspring for readers to dip into, and continue on their journey, enlivened and refreshed. Whatever your walk of life, it offers invaluable guidance and encouragement for your creativity to thrive, perhaps in ways you have never before imagined. § 14 As a therapeutic storyteller, I know from personal experience with teachers, therapists and parents who have attended my seminars in many different countries, people everywhere are thirsting for healing imagination. § 15 Many years ago Nancy helped my first book come into being, and in 2008 she generously penned its foreword. Now life has come full circle and the honour is mine. I am sure you will enjoy this inspirational guidebook to healing imagination, in many ways, and on many levels. Susan Perrow Therapeutic storyteller, teacher trainer, parent educator and counsellor 2019

How to be right in a world gone wrong INTRODUCTION I am a very rare beast. I am a liberal talk show host. And as such, my job is something of a contradiction. The true liberal is cursed with a desire, even a duty, to understand other points of view. It’s a world view that admits disagreement and dissent but seeks to establish objective parameters by which the fundamental truth of things can be judged. ¶ 1 The best way to achieve this is to ask the holders of those differing views to explain the reasoning that has led them to their conclusions. As a phone-in radio show presenter, I have probably had more opportunities to hear from ordinary people over the last few years than almost anyone else on the planet, but sadly digging deep into the foundations of a firmly held, but often evidentially flawed, opinion is rarely as simple as it sounds, nor as commonplace as it should be. ¶ 2 In stark contrast to the traditional liberal, the traditional radio talk show host is usually so desperate to win every argument that he — and this particular breed of broadcaster is almost always a he — essentially constructs an echo chamber of epic proportions and invites callers to pay homage at the altar of his ego. ¶ 3 They are called ‘talk shows’ for a reason and monologues have come to play a big part in my work but, when actually interacting with callers, less talking and more listening has, in the second half of the fourteen years I’ve been doing it, yielded much more satisfying results. ¶ 4 For my own part, I’m happy to employ a little bombast in my defence of my own positions (and even happier to explain and justify them properly), but am always keenest to hear people who disagree with me — about everything from immigration to feminism, obesity to Islamist extremism — attempt to explain and justify their own positions. ¶ 5 I would love to claim otherwise – you need at least a slightly overdeveloped ego to do the job, after all — but the fact that they rarely manage to do so is not necessarily testament to any particular talents on my part. It is a simple reflection of the fact that hardly anyone is asked to explain their opinions these days; to outline not just what they believe, but why. ¶ 6 Even more worryingly, the way in which furiously held convictions so often collapse under the scantest scrutiny speaks to a British society which has morphed during my years on air into a space where, for reasons we will explore, people who once felt compelled by common decency (or ‘political correctness’ as they often prefer to describe it) to keep their most vile views to themselves, now feel free to shout them from the rooftops. ¶ 7 Racism is enjoying a resurgence on both sides of the Atlantic on a scale I would have considered impossible just five years ago. The sort of language and ideas once confined to my most ignorant and bigoted callers have found their way into the White House, and the world seems split into people who find this immensely gratifying and people who find it almost as puzzling as it is terrifying. ¶ 8 Anti-semitism, weapons-grade misogyny, white supremacism, homophobia and quite horrible attempts to frame all Muslim people as complicit in the actions of any Muslim terrorist or criminal have moved squarely into the mainstream media. I believe that this has happened precisely because divisive sloganeering and rancid rhetoric have gone unchecked. ¶ 9 In short, people are not being challenged to justify their views, or to explain why they think what they do. Financial crises and the ensuing hardening of the daily struggle just to get by have always left populations susceptible to the stoking of ancient hatreds, and millions of refugees fleeing wars can quickly be turned into scapegoats for public sector failings by people seeking popularity and power. ¶ 10 The job of describing and challenging this process traditionally falls to the liberal, the truth-teller, the objective journalist, but they are a cowed breed right now, all too conscious that comforting lies deliver more clicks, viewers, listeners and profits than uncomfortable truths. ¶ 11 This, I think, is why so many of my own encounters with people utterly persuaded of their own righteousness but, often to their own shock and horror, completely unable to justify any of it, have enjoyed so much success online recently. It has been undeniably good for my career, by somewhat less so for my soul. ¶ 12 Almost everywhere, blatant lies are offered up as ‘balance’ to demonstrable truths; exaggerations and embellishments are allowed in the interests of ‘impartiality’ and any attempt to correct misleading statements is decried as evidence of an unspecified but deeply suspect ‘agenda’. Why should ‘Bob in Sunderland’ or ‘Julia in Richmond’ expect their views on, say, immigration to be challenged when every time they turn on their radios and televisions or open their newspapers they see respected establishment figures expounding similar views unchallenged, unchecked and, it often seems, unceasingly? ¶ 13 So let’s begin with immigration. Contrary to what many people claim, you can talk about it in this country without being called a racist. I should know, I’ve been doing it for over a decade and nobody’s ever called me one with a straight face. Indeed, it’s hard to imagine quite how the phone-in radio format would survive without the regular deliveries of conversational red meat that immigration issues routinely provide. ¶ 14 While being told regularly that it is a taboo topic, there have been times over recenr years when it’s felt like we talk of little else. Nevertheless, the notion that you somehow can’t talk about it without being called a racist is a perfect example of a hollow, deliberately deceitful slogan or catchphrase moving largely unquestioned into the mainstream of public discourse. ¶ 15 The importance of distinguishing between people who tell lies for personal gain and people who believe them for personal reasons will be a recurring theme throughout this book. I’m not sure it’s ever more blurred than it is here. It is almost always the case, when dealing in the rhetoric of hatred and division, that each popular slogan is a cynically finessed evolution of an altogether nastier one. ¶ 16 This particular claim is the bastard child of the less familiar refrain that you can’t say what you really think about immigration without being called a racist. And this, for many people, is of course quite true. ¶ 17 Their private beliefs about people from countries or cultures other than their own are demonstrably racist, they just don’t like being told so. I’m not sure why, and I suspect the next chapter in these ludicrous, social media-fuelled ‘culture wars’ will see more and more people take the advice that Donald Trump’s former consigliere, Steve Bannon, gave to French fascists to wear the accusation of racism with ‘pride’. ¶ 18 [Speech to the national assembly of France’s National Front, Lille, 10/3/2018] For now, the kindest thing you can do in the circumstances is invite them to say whatever they want with a promise that you won't call them names. Three or four years after I first assumed the position behind the microphone, I was told by a caller from the London borough of Hounslow that he wasn’t allowed to say what he really thought about immigration because of political correctness. ¶ 19 I remember it partly because I lived in the same borough at the time and partly because what followed provided one of those moments where even the presenter is left spluttering in shock at what has just emerged from the radio. ‘Go on. Say what you really think about immigration, John. ¶ 20 I promise not to call you a racist or cut you off for being politically incorrect. Just take a deep breath and say it.’ There was a pause, an audible inhalation of breath, then: ‘Alright. Hounslow’s full of Pakistanis and they all stink? Can you debate with John? Can you let his claim go unchallenged? ¶ 21 Should you keep your promise not to call him racist? And can you answer any of these questions without inflating at least a little bit the notion that free speech is being somehow stifled by well-meaning attempts to cleanse the national conversation of naked prejudice? ¶ 22 This is, perhaps, an extreme example, but it is an illustrative one. John is patently wrong — I have personally smelled several British/Pakistani residents of Hounslow and sundry other boroughs — but he believes that for you to tell him so is for you to seek to censor him. ¶ 23 When people like him, and there are plenty who employ altogether more sophisticated language and sophistry to make similar points, demand that their right to free speech be respected, what they are really demanding is that their speech be free from scrutiny. ¶ 24 John is entitled to make his ludicrous claim but feels that you should not be entitled to call it out for the racist claptrap it so clearly is. The most important lesson I have learned in this job is that it usually serves no purpose to respond with counter-claims or condemnations. ¶ 25 Only by asking John further questions can you get to the heart of him. For example: James: What do they smell of, John? John: Curry James: All of them, John? John: Yes. James: Do you like curry, John? The moments pust before he says “Yes” are the ones you come to work for. ¶ 26 There’s something in the pause, the catch of breath that, however brief, tells you and almost everybody listening that he does like curry. And that the smell of curry, never mind the smell of people who supposedly all smell of curry, is dearly not the source of his problem with immigration. ¶ 27 Or, to be more precise, with immigrants. It is their existence, or at the very least their presence in his Hounslow, that offends him. Oddly, a curious truthfulness often comes into play at times like these, and I haven’t managed to work out why that is. Perhaps it’s because most people are fundamentally honest, even when ashamed of whatever it is they’re being honest about. ¶ 28 Or perhaps they’re not ashamed at all and only ‘lefty do-gooders’ like me expect them to be. Or perhaps there’s something about the format, the knowledge that (in those days) a couple of hundred thousand people are listening, that compels honesty. Although, of course, it often doesn’t and those encounters can be even more illustrative of the mess in which we've all allowed ourselves to become immersed. ¶ 29 I remember a caller from Colchester, let’s call him Bob, who pursued the always popular line of accusing me personally of being insulated from the horrific effects of immigration by dint of being middle class and a resident of the leafy London suburb of Chiswick, an area that my dedicated handful of unapologetically — but always anonymous — racist internet trolls laughably describe as a ‘white enclave’, despite it having over three times more immigrants than the national average. ¶ 30 It is clearly neither racist nor hard to imagine feeling unsettled by women walking in the streets of your home town with their faces covered or shops with frontages in incomprehensible languages. But it is equally not a feeling likely to have been fermented on the mean streets of Colchester, a picturesque market town in Essex. ¶ 31 And if Bob’s opinions are honest and based on his personal experience, rather than spoon-fed headlines about the people most recently arrived in this country, then he’s not going to struggle with my simple questions. James: Talk me through the realities I'm missing, Bob. How has immigration affected you personally? ¶ 32 And I don't mean the fact that your doctor or your milkman or your window cleaner might hail from foreign lands, I mean the negative stuff. The stuff that prompted you to call in. Bob: The schools are full, the hospitals are full … James: Have you ever been turned away from A&E, Bob? Do you know anyone who has? ¶ 33 Bob: Well, no, but that's not the point James: Have you personally encountered a single child — and I’m happy to take this at third or even fourth hand — who has been left without a school place at the beginning of the academic year in an area of above average immigration? ¶ 34 Bob: Of course I haven’t, but everyone knows class sizes are increasing every year James: Are you a Conservative voter, Bob? Bob: Used to be. James: Did you hear lain Duncan Smith on the show last week offering up the fact that there are more people in work than ever before as proof that his policies are working? ¶ 35 (This, obviously, refers to a distant trme when government ministers agreed to be interviewed on my radio show. In fact, I think that was the very last time one did.) Bob: Yes. James: Do you remember when I pointed out that there were more people alive than ever before so this was hardly a reliable measure of progress? ¶ 36 Bob: Yes. James: You just did the same thing with schools. The fact that there are more kids in school than ever before is neither necessarily good nor bad. It’s just counting. In all honesty, I may have been in danger of losing Bob – and indeed the proverbial room – at this point. ¶ 37 So back to the simplest, and most important, question of all. If you didn’t end up here through personal experience, how did you? James: So, in terms of your personal experience of issues related to current immigration levels, what would you say offered up the strongest support for your belief that it’s bad? ¶ 38 Just one thing that if I lived with you in the Coichester ‘hood, instead of in the leafy white enciave of Chiswick, would see the scales falling from my eyes faster than you can say: “Your home town was literally founded by Rornans”. Bob: You can’t get to the tills at my Jocal shop. James: Come again? ¶ 39 Bob: I cannot get to the tilis at the shop. James: Because of all the Immigrants? (A pause. Positively Pinteresque in its proportions. ) Bob: Yes. I probably should have left it there. But I didn’t. James: Have you ever asked the shopkeeper how he feels about you wanting to deport all his customers? ¶ 40 Do you feel sorry for Bob? Is he racist? I’m not sure. He’s clearly a bit of a plank, but we can all be guilty of plankishness. And he has clearly been led far enough down the rabbit hole of racist scaremongering to have lost sight of daylight. But is that his fault? Again, I’m not sure. ¶ 41 But if you fast forward a couple of years from that phone-in to the immediate aftermath of the UK’s Brexit vote and have a look at the Sun, the country’s top-selling newspaper, edited by church-going Catholic Tony Gallagher, you’ll get a pretty clear idea of how someone like Bob can end up so confused. ¶ 42 On 27 June 2016, the newspaper carried a double-page spread trumpeting: ‘Where the Brex Was Won: Streets full of Polish shops, kids not speaking English ... but Union Jacks now flying, high again.’ ¶ 43 Just 24 hours later — and I’m going to use the Sun’s own words here to avoid any danger of misrepresentation — ‘as cops probed more than 200 hate crimes in the wake of last week’s referendum result’, Gallagher published this editorial: ¶ 44 “The Sun today calls on Brits of all creeds, colours and race — Leavers and Remainers — to come together for the good of the country. We are appalled at reports of racist abuse in the wake of last week's EU vote, and utterly condemn attempts to provoke division in our society. Anyone caught inciting a racial hatred must feel the full force of the law. ¶ 45 It’s the “utterly condemn attempts to provoke division in our society” that beggars belief. That and the fact that the two pieces of ‘journalism’ were separated by a single day. It doesn’t make me sympathetic to Bob’s position, but it does make me sympathetic to a man pushed into such positions by ‘journalists’ like Gallagher. ¶ 46 Also on his watch, columnist and disgraced former editor Kelvin MacKenzie claimed to have proof that ‘Muslims ‘are different from the rest of us’. [The Sun, 12/4/2016] Another columnist on Gallagher’s roster infamously explained how “‘pictures of coffins’ and ‘bodies floating in water’ would not make her care about refugees”. ¶ 47 [Katie Hopkins, The Sun, 17/4/2015] I’m often asked how I felt when that particular columnist was briefly employed by the radio station where I work. ‘Soiled’ comes closest. Whether it is the immigrant family with an enormous council house or a horribly misguided decision to take the Union Flag down from a council building, these instances are news precisely because they are as rare as hen’s teeth. ¶ 48 In the hands of an editor like Gallagher, however, they are served up as though commonplace, as proof that ‘we’ are somehow being overwhelmed by ‘them’ It’s heady stuff and leads to people like Bob not even realising that they have developed pungent opinions while possessed of precisely no proof to support them. ¶ 49 It seems to me that there are anly two ways in which someone with no experience of immigration negatively impacting his life can be convinced that it is doing so: first, the scaremongering, served up daily by editors like Gallagher can warp the strongest mind, ¶ 50 and second, a deeply held prejudice against all incomers and resentment of their very presence here (‘Curry John’ would be a contender). If popping people in the former category is patronising, then so be it. I prefer to see it as a fundamental belief in the basic decency of people despite so much evidence to the contrary. ¶ 51 Taken to its extreme, the results of this scaremongering can be truly tragicomic. Since I started presenting a phone-in show, I’ve become a lot more interested in understanding how callers like the one I’m about to describe have ended up where they are, than I am in trying to ‘dismantle’ them. ¶ 52 The problem is that you have to strip their arguments right down to the bone to determine where they come from. On a good day, it makes for a riveting listen. On a bad day, it can make you despair. This chap provided a bit of both. There are a few phrases that set off alarm bells. ¶ 53 ‘Political correctness gone mad’ is obviously one of them, and so is ‘eroding British values’ and ‘multiculturalism is destroying Britain’. Andy in Hemel Hempstead employed all three in the opening two minutes of a call addressing, I think, the question of what we actually mean when we talk of ‘British values’ and what makes people think they’re somehow under threat. ¶ 54 I’ve never understood this argument. You could stick me in the middle of China and feed me nothing, but chlorinated sweet-and-sour chicken and I’d still feel a patriotic swell at the opening bars of Hubert Parry’s score for ‘Jerusalem’; even more so at the words of the poem Blake wrote. ¶ 55 Ditto Shakespeare, Dickens, Thomas Hardy and Kenneth Wolstenholme’s commentary of the closing moments of the 1966 World Cup final. I have tried to imagine what people are feeling when they talk of these ‘values’ disappearing and I can’t. Because they’re not. ¶ 56 We’ll look later at how one particular newspaper editor likes to obsess about such ‘values’ while routinely denigrating Parliamentary sovereignty, the independence of the judiciary and academic freedom, which-seem to me among the most valuable of British values, but for now, consider Andy. ¶ 57 James: But how are your values being eroded? Andy: This isn’t a Christian country anymore. James: Do you go to church, Andy? Andy: No. James: What do you mean, then, when you complain about this not being a Christian country? There's nothing stopping you from being a practising Christian, nothing at all. You’ve elected not to be one. ¶ 58 Andy: We're being overrun by other faiths and cultures and we’re bending over backwards to accommodate them. Again, these phrases and claims are as commonplace as they are unchecked, and if Andy can read variations thereof everywhere from the Sun to the Spectator why would he ever stop to wonder whether they’re true? ¶ 59 They’re designed to make him angry and fearful, not peaceable and thoughtful. James: OK. So if you’re really worried that Christians are being outnumbered by followers of other faiths, and | have to tell you, mate, that the numbers really aren't on your side here, then there's absolutely nothing to stop you redressing the balance by shipping the whole family to Mass on Sunday. ¶ 60 Andy: That’s not the point. We’re doing too much to accommodate other cultures and not enough to protect our own. James: Give me an example. Andy: Eh? James: Give me an example of something that makes you feel your own Christian culture, albeit one you’re not practising, is being diminished by efforts to accommodate the feelings or faiths of people who aren't part of it. ¶ 61 Andy: OK. We looked around a school for my daughter to go to the other day and it had a prayer room for Muslim students. James: What's wrong with praying? Andy: Nothing but it was just for Muslim students. How can that be fair? This is Britain. Now, for the avoidance of doubt, there may be such policies at schools somewhere in Britain and if there are, they're wrong. ¶ 62 Religious segregation is, for me, a line that should never crossed. Have a prayer or a ‘peaceful time’ room by all means you've got the space, but it has to be open to everybody. Come to think of it, I’d call that equality of accessibility a ‘British value’. And also, of course, a ‘liberal’ one. ¶ 63 The point is that I had never heard of it happening before and, truth be told, I didn’t believe him. It was too convenient an example, too much of a piece with the catalogue of predictable complaints that had come before. So I asked him the name of the school and he told me. ¶ 64 And I had a quick scoot online and I couldn’t find any reference to a ‘prayer room’ or a particular since. I lied: “Andy, we’ve got the headmistress on the other line and she doesn’t know what you’re talking about.” Andy hung up. I don’t know why he wanted, perhaps even needed, the narrative of being overwhelmed and under threat to be true. ¶ 65 So much so that he made stuff up to prove it. But I know that he embarrassed himself only because he was asked, politely and calmly, to provide some proof of what he claimed and, apparently, believed. Most of the columnists and editors and commentators whose ugly lead he was following are never asked to do the same. ¶ 66 Of course, people can and often do refuse to explain themseives, insisting that even politely requesting them to do so is a sign of ‘political correctness’ or ‘cultural Marxism’ or the result of ‘Common Purpose’ indoctrination. ¶ 67 ‘Common Purpose’ is a British-funded charity that runs leadership programs around the world but, in the fetid minds of newspaper editors and conspiracy theorists, it is a secretive cabal dedicated to smuggling liberalism and tolerance into British society. ¶ 68 You’ve probably never heard of it, but the Daily Mail describes it as being “like some giant octopus, Common Purpose’s tentacles appear to reach into every cranny of the inner sanctums of Westminster, Whitehall and academia". [Daily Mail, 16/11/2012] ¶ 69 In other words, for many of my most profoundly mistaken callers, their truths are self-evident and in need of no defence or explanation whatsoever. These are not bad people, but it is almost impossible to explain how they’ve ended up in such a mess without portraying them as at best gullible and at worst dangerous. ¶ 70 And these days I never want to do that. Certainly, the radio format lends itself to cajoling and castigation to a degree that can sometimes seem close to bullying. But there is something truly remarkable about a person holding, an opinion with such confidence that they call a radio programme with a million listeners, ¶ 71 presented by a person with a reputation for scrutinising, arguments more closely than most, only to discover that they have no idea why they believe what they profess to believe. And it’s this confidence that’s key. The call screening process on the programme is relatively straightforward: has this person been on recently? ¶ 72 And do they sound as if they really mean what they’re saying (as opposed to just fancying a few minutes on the wireless)? It takes about thirty seconds to get, respectively, a no and a yes and the caller will then be placed in a queue to come on. ¶ 73 Of course, some of the people who lack the courage or confidence to call in have persuaded themselves that the people who end up embarrassing themselves on air have been specially selected for the weakness of their position, In fact, the opposite is true. ¶ 74 There’s no point in me talking to someone who doesn’t sound completely convinced that they’re right and I’m wrong. It’s the strength of this conviction that I find enduringly fascinating. ¶ 75 Long before Donald Trump deployed the phrase “fake news” to punt his own barefaced lies while discrediting honest journalism that was critical of him, the British media was breathtakingly complicit in portraying immigration as an unalloyed bad. ¶ 76 Pockets of resistance at the Guardian and elsewhere were preaching almost pointlessly to the choir, while the likes of Kelvin MacKenzie at the Sun and latterly Paul Dacre at the Daily Mail, inarguably the two most powerful and toxic propagandists of the last 30 years, were offering up generous portions of xenophobic fire and brimstone on a daily basis. ¶ 77 It wasn’t just that immigration sight be a factor in sundry perceived problems. Immigration was the problem. Take, for example, a few hardy perennials immigrants undercut our wages, immigrants put a strain on public services and immigrants are responsible for the housing crisis. ¶ 78 These are widely held and not particularly racist convictions, but even if you allow that they are partly true, which is not at all clear, immigration can never account for either the existence or the scale of the perceived problems. ¶ 79 To be temporarily trite, substitute the three instances of the word ‘immigrants’ above for the word ‘people’ and you will see that exclusively blaming the former for the travails of the latter only helps to excuse the employers who aren’t paying decent wages, the politicians who are underfunding the public sector and the property developers who aren’t building houses. ¶ 80 Conveniently, some of my own erstwhile colleagues in the media provide a poignant case in point here. When I worked at the once mighty Daily Express in the late 1990s it was owned by a Labour Party peer, edited by a founder of the feminist Spare Rib magazine and was embarking upon an ambitious attempt to produce popular liberalism as an antidote to the toxic-but-ineffably-popular scaremongering and deceit being perpetrated by its historic rival, the Mail. ¶ 88 It was not an entirely successful venture. I inexplicably ended up as showbusiness editor and, in 2000, shortly after I surrendered the post to rescue my liver and have a crack at broadcasting, the paper was sold to a publisher and pornographer. ¶ 89 His name was Richard Desmond and his political convictions were so rock solid that his proprietorship saw the paper’s support move from Labour to the Conservatives to the right-wing extremists, Ukip. As it did so, its editors inevitably sought to propagate some of the myths and exaggerations popularised by the Mail. ¶ 90 Chief among them was the idea that immigration was driving down the wages of ‘British’ workers, (I put British in quotes here because, for me, anyone working in Britain is a British worker, just as anyone working in a fish and chip shop is a fish and chip shop worker.) ¶ 91 Readers, though dwindling in number, lapped it up; the letters page and, later, online-comments section, groaned under the weight of feisty defenders of the national interest insisting that we sling out these hard-working wage-deflators pronto, and anyone who questioned the rationale for doing so (like me) would be routinely told that we’d soon change our tune if a Pole offered to come and do our job for a fraction of our fee. § 92 It’s heady stuff. All you need to do to prove that Poles (other Eastern Europeans are available but the Poles tend to bear the brunt of this particular brand of baiting) have driven down your wages is a) Be unhappy about how much you get paid and b) Find a Pole doing the same job. In the crucible of tabloid provocation, it’s all their fault. ¶ 93 One rather pertinent point was never mentioned by the journalists writing about the issue, or the editors instructing them to do so, or the proprietor throwing the weight of his paper’s political support around like a frisbee in the hope, perhaps, of securing a peerage. ¶ 94 Namely, that from April 2008 to January 2017, most journalists on the Express Group’s four national titles received pay rises of precisely zero pence — nor even a consideration to reflect the rise in living costs they would have been reading (and writing) about in their own news pages. ¶ 95 Meanwhile, in 2014 alone the company reported pre-tax profits of £333.7 million. This isn’t a conspiracy or an example of political correctness going mad or a refusal to stand up for British values. ¶ 96 Rather, it is an incredibly simple, entirely evidence-based example of a newspaper proprietor who sacked staff, enacted swingeing, real-term pay cuts across his entire workforce and trousered epic amounts of moolah for himself ¶ 97 (Desmond is estimated to have taken £350 million out of the company during his 17 years of ownership) while enthusiastically telling ‘British’ workers that their wages were being reduced by immigrants. ¶ 98 The Daily Mail, where former editor Paul Dacre’s career-long mission to terrorise Middle England with fears of imminent immigrant invasion has prompted many of my younger callers to describe relations with older relatives being profoundly and permanently damaged, provides an even more telling vignette. § 99 As recently as March 2018, almost two years after the paper’s shameful weaponisation of immigration helped to deliver a Brexit set to make almost everyone poorer, cleaners at the newspaper’s Kensington office were being paid, via an outsourcing company, £7.50 an hour, ¶ 100 the legal minimum for workers over 25 years of age but considerably less than the ‘London Living Wage’, a calculation based on what it actually costs to live in the capital. Given that the majority of the 31 staff hailed fro the Caribbean, Africa and South America this could, I suppose, have been offered up as evidence of migrant worker driving down wages. ¶ 101 Of course, if Dacre had been minded to portray the people who polish his desk every morning for just north of 15 grand a year as architects of national wage deflation he would have been wise to keep mention of his own annual remuneration ~ £2.37 million in 2017 alone — off the page. ¶ 102 Even less likely to enjoy any mention in his titles is a campaign undertaken in early 2018 by the United Voices of the World trade union. On behalf of the 31 cleaners, they secured over 100,000 signatures on a petition demanding they be paid the London Living Wage of £10.20 an hour and organised strike action. ¶ 103 While the paper’s owners insisted that the decision had nothing to do with the UVW’s actions, or the petition, or the threatened strike, March 2018 saw the cleaners secure the desired pay rises. ¶ 104 So, a newspaper which routinely peddles the notion that immigration drives down the wages of ‘ordinary’ workers had its Offices cleaned by adults earning about £15,600 a year, while its editor received £2.37 million. ¶ 105 And when collective bargaining, under the auspices of a trade union, appeared to secure precisely the sort of pay rises Daily Mazi readers are routinely told they are being denied by immigration, the paper’s owners passed it all off as a remarkable coincidence. ¶ 106 You will, needless to say, struggle to find any mention of this episode in any right-wing British newspaper because right-wing British newspapers despise trade unions, and the complete demonisation of immigrants in the workplace can obviously only work when carried out in tandem with the demonisation of trade unions. ¶ 107 Only then can people be successfully persuaded both that their working conditions are undermined by foreigners and that joining forces to seek improvement to those working conditions is dangerous, quasi-communist claptrap. ¶ 108 That it all seems so obvious makes the question of why people embrace these manipulations so enthusiastically all the more perplexing. The only answer I’ve come up with after years talking with countless Johns and Bobs and Andys is that they somehow enjoy being frightened. ¶ 109 And dominant elements of the media stoke those fears because it has always been easier and more lucrative to sell tickets for the ghost train than for the speak-your-weight machine. I’m not expecting any prizes for this insight. ¶ 110 This book will atrempt both to help people shrug off the crippling chains of these misinformed fears and furies and also suggest some tactics which friends and family members might employ to help the afflicted to do so. – James O’Brien, ~2018 ¶ 111

Poisonous plants in Great Britain Introduction None should venture out into fleld or forest to gather food or remedies without some knowledge of the plants and fungi that may cause harm, or even prove deadly, if consumed. At 14 years of age I foolishly collected and ingested a very poisonous inocybe mushroom, and. as a consequence developed a healthy interest and respect for poisonous plants and fungi. ¶ 1 This little book contains plenty to fascinate and inform young and old alike. There are notes on appearance, symptoms of poisoning, antidotes and anecdotes. Many of the most poisonous species are illustrated, using antique prints from some of the greatest botanical artists to have lived. ¶ 2 However, this book is not a comprehensive guide, for which a far larger volume would be required, neither is it intended to be a substitute for a reliable field guide to the identification of species, of which there are many available. The information in this book is is designed to help the naturalist, wildfood collector, folklorist, parent or livestock owner to carry out their respective tasks in an informed way. ¶ 3 Anecdotes are provided for your information and entertainment only, and are not intended to promote experimentation with ANY of the plants and fungi listed. To any who would be so tempted, I implore you to reflect upon these words from a memorial stone: “As I Was, So Are THEE As I Am, So Wilt Thou Bee” ¶ 4 St. Nicholas Church, Bromham, Wiltshire A FEW WISE Words How to use this book “All things are poison and nothing is without poison, only the dose permits something not to be poisonous” – Paracelsus, alchemist and physician, 1493 - 1591 FIRST AND FOREMOST, ALWAYS REMEMBER THAT POISONS ARE POISONOUS, TAKE CARE WHEN DEALING WITH EVERYTHING ABOUT THEM. ¶ 5 READ THE BOOKS RECOMMENDED ON THE DEDICATION PAGE, SECONDLY, IF YOU GO OUT COLLECTING, ALWAYS RETAIN SOME SPECIMENS FOR IDENTIFICATION. WHEN YOU GET HOME, YOU CAN MAKE USE OF THE INTERNET, OR A TEXTUAL KEY LIKE “THE BRITISH EXCURSION FLORA’. ¶ 6 SHOW THEM TO AN EXPERT AT YOUR LOCAL WILDLIFE TRUST OR BIOLOGICAL RECORDS OFFICE. KEEP UNIDENTIFIED SPECIMENS SEPARATE FROM ANY THAT YOU ARE COLLECTING FOR FOOD; SOMETIMES EVEN TINY AMOUNTS CAN BE POISONOUS. ¶ 7 THIRDLY, BOOK YOURSELF ONTO SOME FUNGUS FORAYS WITH A LOCAL MUSHROOM EXPERT. THE ADVICE AND CONNECTIONS YOU MAKE WILL STAND YOU IN GOOD STEAD, AND THE EXPERIENCE COULD BE SOMETHING THAT YOU CHERISH. ¶ 8 FINALLY, IF YOU THINK THAT SOMEBODY HAS BEEN POISONED, SEEK MEDICAL ATTENTION IMMEDIATELY. DO NOT HESITATE. IF POSSIBLE, TAKE A SAMPLE OF THE OFFENDING MATERIAL WITH YOU TO THE NEAREST HOSPITAL. REMEMBER, TIME IS OF THE ESSENCE, AND PROMPT ACTION SAVES LIVES. ¶ 9

MEET JOSÉ SILVA José Silva was born August 11, 1914, in Laredo, Texas. When he was four, his father died. His mother soon re-married, and he, his older sister, and younger brother moved in with their grandmother. Two years later he became the family breadwinner, selling newspapers, shining shoes, and doing odd jobs. ¶ 1 In the evenings he watched his sister and brother do their homework, and they helped him learn to read and write. He has never gone to school, except to teach. José's rise from poverty began one day when he was waiting his turn in a barbershop. He reached for something to read. ¶ 2 What he picked up was a lesson from a correspondence course on how to repair radios. José asked to borrow it, but the barber would only rent it, and that on condition that José complete the examinations in the back in the barber's name. Each week José paid a dollar, read the lesson, and completed the examination. ¶ 3 Soon a diploma bung in the barbershop, while across town José, at the age of fifteen, began to repair radios. As the years passed, his repair business became one of the largest in the area, providing money for the education of his brother and sister, the wherewithal for him to marry, plus eventually some half-million dollars to finance the twenty years of research that led to Mind Control. ¶ 4 Another man with diplomas, these more conscientiously earned than the barber's, inadvertently sparked this research. The man was a psychiatrist whose job it was to ask questions of men being inducted into the Signal Corps during World War II. "Do you wet your bed?" José was dumbfounded. ¶ 5 "Do you like women?" José, the father of three, and destined one day to be the father of ten, was appalled. Surely, he thought, the man knew more about the human mind than the barber knew about radios. Why such stupid questions? ¶ 6 It was this perplexing moment that started José on an odyssey of scientific research that led to his becoming without diplomas or certificates one of the most creative scholars of his age. Through their writings, Freud, Jung, and Adler became his early teachers. ¶ 7 The stupid questions took on deeper meanings, and soon José was ready to ask a question of his own: Is it possible, using hypnosis, to improve a person's learning ability-in fact, raise his I.Q.? In those days I.Q. was believed to be something we were born with, but José was not so sure. ¶ 8 The question had to wait while he studied advanced electronics to become an instructor in the Signal Corps. When he was discharged, with savings gone and $200 in his pocket, he began slowly to rebuild his business. At the same time he took a half-time teaching job at Laredo Junior College, where he supervised three other teachers and was charged with creating the school's electronics laboratories. ¶ 9 Five years later, with television on the scene, his repair business began to flourish and José called a halt to his teaching career. His business once again became the largest in town. His workdays ended about nine each night. He would have dinner, help put the children to bed, and when the house was quiet, study for about three hours. ¶ 10 His studies led him further into hypnosis. What he learned about hypnosis, plus what he knew about electronics, plus some F's on his children's report cards brought him back to the question he had raised earlier can learning ability, the I.Q., be improved through some kind of mental training? ¶ 11 José already knew that the mind generates electricity – he had read about experiments that revealed the Alpha rhythm early in this century. And he knew from his work in electronics that the ideal circuit is the one with the least resistance, or impedance, because it makes the greatest use of its electrical energy. ¶ 12 Would the brain work more effectively too if its impedance were lowered? And can its impedance be lowered? José began using hypnosis to quiet the minds of his children and he discovered what to many appeared to be a paradox: He found that the brain was more energetic when it was less active. At lower frequencies the brain received and stored more information. ¶ 13 The crucial problem was to keep the mind alert at these frequencies, which are associated more with daydreaming and sleep than with practical activity. Hypnosis permitted the receptivity José was looking for, but not the kind of independent thought that leads to reasoning things out so they can be understood. ¶ 14 Having a head full of remembered facts is not enough; insight and understanding are necessary, too. José soon abandoned hypnosis and began experimenting with mental training exercises to quiet the brain yet keep it more independently alert than in hypnosis. This, he reasoned, would lead to improved memory combined with understanding and hence to higher I.Q. scores. ¶ 15 The exercises from which Mind Control evolved called for relaxed concentration and vivid mental visualization as ways of reaching lower levels. Once reached, these levels proved more effective than Beta in learning. The proof was in his children's sharply improved grades over a three-year period while he continued to improve his techniques. ¶ 16 José had now scored a first-a very significant one, which other research, principally biofeedback, has since confirmed. He was the first person to prove that we can learn to function with awareness at the Alpha and Theta frequencies of the brain. Another first, an equally astonishing one, was soon to come. ¶ 17 One evening José's daughter had gone to her "level" (to use today's Mind Control terminology), and José was questioning her about her studies. As she answered each question, he framed the next in his mind. This was the usual procedure, and so far the session was no different from hundreds that had gone before. ¶ 18 Suddenly, quietly, the routine was momentously changed. She answered a question her father had not yet asked. Then another. And another. She was reading his mind! This was in 1953, when ESP was becoming a respectable subject for scientific inquiry, largely through the published work of Dr. J. B. Rhine of Duke University. ¶ 19 José wrote to Dr. Rhine to report that he had trained his daughter to practice ESP and received a disappointing answer. Dr. Rhine hinted that the girl might have been psychic to begin with. Without tests of the girl before the training, there was no way to tell. Meanwhile, José's neighbors noticed that his children's schoolwork had remarkably improved. ¶ 20 At the beginning of his experiments they had been wary of his probings into the unknown, an unknown perhaps protected by forces that were best not tampered with. However, the successes of a man working with his own children could not be ignored. Would José train their children too? ¶ 21 After the letter from Dr. Rhine, this was just what José needed. If what he had accomplished with one child could be accomplished with others, he would have chalked up the kind of repeatable experiments that are basic to the scientific method. ¶ 22 Over the next ten years he trained 39 Laredo children, with even better results because he improved his techniques a little with each child. Thus another first was scored: He had developed the first method in history that can train anyone to use ESP, and he had thirty-nine repeatable experiments to prove it. Now to perfect the method. ¶ 23 Within another three years, José developed the course of training which is now standard. It takes only 40 to 48 hours and is as effective with adults as with children. So far it has been validated by some 500,000 "experiments," a measure of repeatability that no open-minded scientist can ignore. ¶ 24 These long years of research were financed by José's growing electronics business. No university or foundation or government grants were available for so far-out a field of research. Today the Mind Control organization is a thriving family business, with its profits going largely to more research and to support its accelerating growth. ¶ 25 There are Mind Control lecturers or centers in all fifty states and in thirty-four foreign nations. With all this success, José has not become a celebrity, nor a guru or spiritual leader with followers or disciples. He is a plain man of simple ways, who speaks with the soft, almost lost accent of a Mexican-American. ¶ 26 He is a powerfully built, stocky man with a kindly face that creases easily into a smile.. Anyone who asks José what success has meant to him will be answered with a flood of success stories. A few examples: A woman wrote to the Boston Herald American begging for some way to help her husband, who was tormented by migraine headaches. ¶ 27 The newspaper printed her letter, then another letter the next day from someone else, also pleading for a way to control such headaches. A physician read these letters and wrote that she had had migraine headaches all her life. She had taken Mind Control and had not had one since. "And would you believe it, the next introductory lecture was mobbed. Absolutely mobbed." ¶ 28 Another physician, a prominent psychiatrist, advises all his patients to take Mind Control because it gives them insights that in some cases would require two years of therapy to produce. An entire marketing company was organized as a co-op by graduates who used what they learned in Mind Control to invent new products and devise ways of marketing them. ¶ 29 In its third year, the company has eighteen products on the market. An advertising man used to need about two months to create a campaign for new clients-about average in his field. Now, with Mind Control, the basic ideas come in twenty minutes and the rest of the work is done in two weeks. ¶ 30 Fourteen Chicago White Sox players took Mind Control. All their individual averages improved, most of them dramatically. The husband of an overweight woman suggested she try Mind Control because all her diets had failed. She agreed, provided he went too. She lost twenty pounds in six weeks; he stopped smoking. ¶ 31 A professor at a college of pharmacy teaches Mind Control techniques to his students. "Their grades are going up in all their courses, with less studying, and they're more relaxed. . . . Everybody already knows how to use his or her imagination. I just get my students to practice it more. ¶ 32 I show them that imagination is valid and that there's a form of reality in imagination that they can use." Although José smiles easily, when he hears "José, you've changed my life!" the smile fades a little and he says, "No, I didn't do it. You did, your own mind." Now, beginning with the next chapter, José himself will show you how to use your mind to change your life.

Customer-friendly writing Everyone at work has customers - and they are the most important people in your business. Because without your customers you would have no business. A customer is anyone you provide with goods or services, whether they are inside your organisation or outside it, whether they pay you or not. § 1 Taking good care of your customers, giving them your very best goods or service, is not just a nice thing to do, it's a requirement, a solemn obligation. It's your job. When you write to someone, or for someone, you're providing a service. § 2 The reader is your customer and you must give them your best product, your best service. But do you? Or do you waste their time or confuse them with poor writing? Experts tell us that managers and staff in large organisations can spend well over half their working time handling paperwork - writing or reading the writing of others. § 3 Too often these papers are longer than they need to be, or unclear, or both. This wastes time for the writer and reader, causes confusion and damages images. After all, to someone you haven't met, your writing is you (and your organisation). How do you look? § 4 Reducing the volume of paperwork and increasing its clarity is one of the most overlooked yet easiest ways to improve customer care for all your customers - inside and outside your organisation - while increasing efficiency and boosting morale. ¶ 5 A day of training in Customer-Friendly Writing and this accompanying booklet offer practical advice to make your writing quicker and easier - for you to write and for others to read and understand. That's customer care. That's customer-friendly. That's got to be a good idea. Park Sims, 1995 ¶ 6

Social Psychology of Work THIS book is intended for those who work and would like to understand it better, and for those who organize work and would like to organize it better. There are a number of pressing problems of work in modern countries: widespread discontent and alienation; low motivation and lack of cooperation; confllict between management and unions, and between other groups; and difficulties about introducing new technologies, leading to a slow rate of economic growth in Britain and other countries. ¶ 1 These problems are becoming more acute as we move into a period of automation and post-industrial society, and are faced with the decline of the Protestant ethic. An immense amount of research has been carried out in recent years in the field of industrial psychology and sociology. § 2 The study of social behaviour at work constitutes a further dimension not covered by industrial relations, management techniques or work-study, though it has implications for all these. § 3 Most work involves cooperation in groups, leadership and organization, and a number of different kinds of social relationship. ¶ 3 Social psychology is concerned with the social interaction and social relationships involved, and their effect on work efficiency and satisfaction. § 4 I have had three groups of readers particularly in mind. Managers and administrators have been bombarded, during recent years, by theories, packages and training methods from behavioural scientists and consultants. § 5 We shall try to evaluate these approaches in the light of the mounting mass of empirical evidence. We shall look at work as it is done in some other countries today, to obtain a wider perspective. § 6 There is considerable agreement over the empirical facts in this field, and they point clearly to a set of optimum conditions for work. Young people are not all convinced of the importance of work, or that working organizations as they exist today are the best means of doing it. ¶ 7 We shall discuss the biological basis of work, and its historical development. Problems with contemporary working organizations will be described and a number of alternative designs considered. § 8 We shall consider whether work should be allowed to disappear, whether it should be made more like leisure or leisure made more like work. Social psychologists. Work is one of the central activities of life, and social behaviour at work is one of the most important and interesting forms of social behaviour. § 9 Research on work extends our vision of social behaviour by drawing attention to factors which are not found inside laboratories - the effects of technology and of social structures, the historical development in the culture of social relationships, the effects on behaviour of socialization for roles and of powerful motivations, the performance of professional social skills. ¶ 10 I have tried to produce a book that is both popular and scholarly; popular in that it is intended to be of use to a wide audience, scholarly in that all the assertions in it are based on good evidence and some of the main sources are given. § 11 I am grateful to [people] for commenting on the manuscript, to [another person] for her work on the manuscript, and to [other people] for typing it. Michael Argyle Department of Experimental Psychology Oxford, 1984

The Blind Watchmaker This book is written in the conviction that our own existence once presented the greatest of all mysteries, but that it is a mystery no longer because it is solved. Darwin and Wallace solved it, though we shall continue to add footnotes to their solution for a while yet. § 1 I wrote the book because I was surprised that so many people seemed not only unaware of the elegant and beautiful solution to this deepest of problems but, incredibly, in many cases actually unaware that there was a problem in the first place! ¶ 2 The problem is that of complex design. The computer on which I am writing these words has an information storage capacity of about 64 kilobytes (one byte is used to hold each character of text). The computer was consciously designed and deliberately manufactured. § 3 The brain with which you are understanding my words is an array of some ten million kiloneurones. Many of these billions of nerve cells have each more than a thousand 'electric wires' connecting them to other neurones. § 4 Moreover, at the molecular genetic level, every single one of more than a trillion cells in the body contains about a thousand times as much precisely-coded digital information as my entire computer. ¶ 5 The complexity of living organisms is matched by the elegant efficiency of their apparent design. If anyone doesn't agree that this amount of complex design cries out for an explanation, I give up. No, on second thoughts I don't give up, because one of my aims in the book is to convey something of the sheer wonder of biological complexity to those whose eyes have not been opened to it. ¶ 6 But having built up the mystery, my other main aim is to remove it again by explaining the solution. Explaining is a difficult art. You can explain something so that your reader understands the words; and you can explain something so that the reader feels it in the marrow of his bones. ¶ 7 To do the latter, it sometimes isn't enough to lay the evidence before the reader in a dispassionate way. You have to become an advocate and use the tricks of the advocate's trade. This book is not a dispassionate scientific treatise. § 8 Other books on Darwinism are, and many of them are excellent and informative and should be read in conjunction with this one. Far from being dispassionate, it has to be confessed that in parts this book is written with a passion which, in a professional scientific journal, might excite comment. § 9 Certainly it seeks to inform, but it also seeks to persuade and even - one can specify aims without presumption - to inspire. I want to inspire the reader with a vision of our own existence as, on the face of it, a spine-chilling mystery; and simultaneously to convey the full excitement of the fact that it is a mystery with an elegant solution which is within our grasp. ¶ 10 More, I want to persuade the reader, not just that the Darwinian world-view happens to be true, but that it is the only known theory that could, in principle, solve the mystery of our existence. This makes it a doubly satisfying theory. § 11 A good case can be made that Darwinism is true, not just on this planet but all over the universe wherever life may be found. In one respect I plead to distance myself from professional advocates. A lawyer or a politician is paid to exercise his passion and his persuasion on behalf of a client or a cause in which he may not privately believe. § 12 I have never done this and I never shall. I may not always be right, but I care passionately about what is true and I never say anything that I do not believe to be right. I remember being shocked when visiting a university debating society to debate with creationists. § 13 At dinner after the debate, I was placed next to a young woman who had made a relatively powerful speech in favour of creationism. She clearly couldn't be a creationist, so I asked her to tell me honestly why she had done it. ¶ 14 She freely admitted that she was simply practising her debating skills, and found it more challenging to advocate a position in which she did not believe. Apparently it is common practice in university debating societies for speakers simply to be told on which side they are to speak. § 15 Their own beliefs don't come into it. I had come a long way to perform the disagreeable task of public speaking, because I believed in the truth of the motion that I had been asked to propose. § 16 When I discovered that members of the society were using the motion as a vehicle for playing arguing games, resolved to decline future invitations from debating societies that encourage insincere advocacy on issues where scientific truth is at stake. ¶ 17 For reasons that are not entirely clear to me, Darwinism seems more in need of advocacy than similarly established truths in other branches of science. Many of us have no grasp of quantum theory, or Einstein's theories of special and general relativity, but this does not in itself lead us to oppose these theories! § 18 Darwinism, unlike 'Einsteinism', seems to be regarded as fair game for critics with any degree of ignorance. I suppose one trouble with Darwinism is that, as Jacques Monod perceptively remarked, everybody thinks he understands it. § 19 It is, indeed, a remarkably simple theory; childishly so, one would have thought, in comparison with almost all of physics and mathematics. In essence, it amounts simply to the idea that non-random reproduction, where there is hereditary variation, has consequences that are far-reaching if there is time for them to be cumulative. ¶ 20 But we have good grounds for believing that this simplicity is deceptive. Never forget that, simple as the theory may seem, nobody thought of it until Darwin and Wallace in the mid nineteenth century, nearly 200 years after Newton's Principia, and more than 2,000 years after Eratosthenes measured the Earth. ¶ 21 How could such a simple idea go so long undiscovered by thinkers of the calibre of Newton, Galileo, Descartes, Leibnitz, Hume and Aristotle? Why did it have to wait for two Victorian naturalists? What was wrong with philosophers and mathematicians that they overlooked it? § 22 And how can such a powerful idea go still largely unabsorbed into popular consciousness? It is almost as if the human brain were specifically designed to misunderstand Darwinism, and to find it hard to believe. Take, for instance, the issue of 'chance', often dramatized as blind chance. § 23 The great majority of people that attack Darwinism leap with almost unseemly eagerness to the mistaken idea that there is nothing other than random chance in it. Since living complexity embodies the very antithesis of chance, if you think that Darwinism is tantamount to chance you'll obviously find it easy to refute Darwinism! § 24 One of my tasks will be to destroy this eagerly believed myth that Darwinism is a theory of 'chance'. Another way in which we seem predisposed to disbelieve Darwinism is that our brains are built to deal with events on radically different timescales from those that characterize evolutionary change. § 25 We are equipped to appreciate processes that take seconds, minutes, years or, at most, decades to complete. Darwinism is a theory of cumulative processes so slow that they take between thousands and millions of decades to complete. § 26 All our intuitive judgements of what is probable turn out to be wrong by many orders of magnitude. Our well-tuned apparatus of scepticism and subjective probability-theory misfires by huge margins, because it is tuned - ironically, by evolution itself - to work within a lifetime of a few decades. ¶ 27 It requires effort of the imagination to escape from the prison of familiar timescale, an effort that I shall try to assist. A third respect in which our brains seem predisposed to resist Darwinism stems from our great success as creative designers. § 28 Our world is dominated by feats of engineering and works of art. We are entirely accustomed to the idea that complex elegance is an indicator of premeditated, crafted design. § 29 This is probably the most powerful reason for the belief, held by the vast majority of people that have ever lived, in some kind of supernatural deity. ¶ 30 It took a very large leap of the imagination for Darwin and Wallace to see that, contrary to all intuition, there is another way and, once you have understood it, a far more plausible way, for complex 'design' to arise out of primeval simplicity. § 31 A leap of the imagination so large that, to this day, many people seem still unwilling to make it. It is the main purpose of this book to help the reader to make this leap. Authors naturally hope that their books will have lasting rather than ephemeral impact. § 32 But any advocate, in addition to putting the timeless part of his case, must also respond to contemporary advocates of opposing, or apparently opposing, points of view. There is a risk that some of these arguments, however hotly they may rage today, will seem terribly dated in decades to come. § 33 The paradox has often been noted that the first edition of The Origin of Species makes a better case than the sixth. This is because Darwin felt obliged, in his later editions, to respond to contemporary criticisms of the first edition, criticisms which now seem so dated that the replies to them merely get in the way, and in places even mislead. § 34 Nevertheless, the temptation to ignore fashionable contemporary criticisms that one suspects of being nine days' wonders is a temptation that should not be indulged, for reasons of courtesy not just to the critics but to their otherwise confused readers. ¶ 35 Though I have my own private ideas on which chapters of my book will eventually prove ephemeral for this reason, the reader - and time - must judge. I am distressed to find that some women friends (fortunately not many) treat the use of the impersonal masculine pronoun as if it showed intention to exclude them. ¶ 36 If there were any excluding to be done (happily there isn't) I think I would sooner exclude men, but when I once tentatively tried referring to my abstract reader as 'she', a feminist denounced me for patronizing condescension: I ought to say 'he-or-she', and 'his-or-her'. § 37 That is easy to do if you don't care about language, but then if you don't care about language you don't deserve readers of either sex. Here, I have returned to the normal conventions of English pronouns. I may refer to the 'reader' as 'he', but I no more think of my readers as specifically male than a French speaker thinks of a table as female. § 38 As a matter of fact I believe I do, more often than not, think of my readers as female, but that is my personal affair and I'd hate to think that such considerations impinged on how I use my native language. § 39 Personal, too, are some of my reasons for gratitude. Those to whom I cannot do justice will understand. My publishers saw no reason to keep from me the identities of their referees (not 'reviewers': reviewers, pace many Americans under 40, criticize books only after they are published, when it is too late for the author to do anything about it). ¶ 40 I also have benefited greatly from the suggestions of [a person] (again), [some people] kindly criticized Chapter 12, and the final version has benefited from its complete excision. [Two people], now no longer even officially my students, are, together with [another person], the leading lights of the group of colleagues with whom I discuss evolution and from whose ideas I benefit almost daily. ¶ 41 They, [and some others] have helpfully criticized various chapters for me. [Another person] made numerous improvements, and [yet another person] corrected a major error. [Two more people] advised on computing problems, and the Apple Macintosh Syndicate of the Zoology Department kindly allowed their laser printer to draw biomorphs. ¶ 42 Once again I have benefited from the relentless dynamism with which Michael Rodgers, now of Longman, carries all before him. He, and Mary Cunnane of Norton, skilfully applied the accelerator (to my morale) and the brake (to my sense of humour) when each was needed. ¶ 43 Part of the book was written during a sabbatical leave kindly granted a debt by the Department of Zoology and New College. Finally should have acknowledged in both my previous books - the Oxford tutorial system and my many tutorial pupils in zoology over the years have helped me to practise what few skills I may have in the difficult art of explaining. Richard Dawkins Oxford, 1986

Spy the lie Welcome to Our World Imagine that it's the late afternoon of September 11, 2001. Rescue crews are dealing with the unthinkable amid the massive heap of acrid rubble at Ground Zero in New York, where the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center stood that morning. § 1 The wreckage of United Airlines Flight 93 has turned a peaceful field near Shanksville, Pennsylvania, into a horrifying disaster site. The charred gash in the northwest face of the Pentagon, just minutes up the George Washington Parkway from where you and your colleagues are still coming to grips with what has happened, is smoldering. § 2 The United States of America is under attack. You're not unlike the hundreds of millions of your fellow citizens of America and the world who are trying to come to grips with the same thing. ¶ 3 Just about all the emotions are the same. The difference is that you're an officer with the Central Intelligence Agency, and you have unique skills that will be tapped to help determine the source of the attack, the nature of the immediate threat to the nation, and our country's best chances for preventing a recurrence. Welcome to our world. ¶ 4 The three of us came into this world from entirely different directions, and from vastly different backgrounds. The common denominator was the combination of a fascination with human nature, and a conviction that untruthfulness lies at the heart of all too many of the problems we face as individuals, as a nation, and as a global community. ¶ 5 Phil Houston was a career CIA officer, whose years of experience as an Agency polygraph examiner positioned him not only for senior-level assignments overseeing internal investigations and the security of CIA personnel and facilities, but for the creation of that unique skill set, born of hundreds of interviews and noncoercive interrogations, that the country would be tapping at one of the most dire hours in its history. ¶ 6 Michael Floyd's CIA service was preceded by a separate career as a private-sector polygraph expert. He provided training for polygraph examiners in the CIA and throughout the public and private sectors, and conducted polygraph examinations in hundreds of criminal investigations, many of them high-profile cases. ¶ 7 Susan Carnicero, an expert in criminal psychology, was a CIA operative under deep cover before coming in from the cold and serving as a polygraph examiner and personnel screening specialist. Eventually, we shared an overarching, driving passion: to be able to know whether or not a person is telling the truth. ¶ 8 The deception-detection methodology we will share with you in this book has its roots in the polygraph-examination experience – an experience that can ascertain a person's truthfulness quite effectively when administered by a skilled examiner. § 9 Our methodology can be employed with a degree of effectiveness that equates to or even surpasses what is achieved by means of a polygraph. Phil was the principal architect of the methodology, which was developed within the CIA for applications that were Agency-specific, and that cannot be shared here due to the need to protect CIA sources and methods. § 9 But its effectiveness became so quickly and widely recognized that the broader intelligence community and federal law enforcement agencies sought and received training in the methodology. ¶ 10 The three of us have since worked together to further its development and to fine-tune it for a wider range of applications. § 11 The event that cleared the way for us to share the methodology with you took place in 1996, when Phil and several of his colleagues in the CIA's Office of Security received the Agency's permission to provide the training to the private sector. ¶ 12 While much of its application within the intelligence community was clearly classified, the methodology itself was determined to be unclassified, so there was no reason the training couldn't be made available to outside interests. § 13 Susan, who would become the lead instructor in the methodology within the Agency, joined the outside effort a short time later. Since then, the three of us have provided the training to hundreds of organizations, from Wall Street clients, corporate enterprises, and law firms, to nonprofits, academic institutions, and local law-enforcement agencies. § 14 Still, we recognized that the applicability of the model is so universal that there remained a massive audience that we could never hope to reach through our training programs. ¶ 15 So we decided that the next logical step was to introduce the model to people everywhere who could use it in every-day life-at work, at home, and at school. That's where you come in. You, like everyone else, routinely have questions, the answers to which have a meaningful impact on your life. ¶ 16 Is your boss being completely up front about those projections for the next two quarters and why it behooves everybody to stick around rather than bolt to a competitor? Is your significant other being straight with you about having done nothing more last night than hook up with a couple of friends for a drink? ¶ 17 Is your child being honest when he assures you that he has never experimented with drugs? Other questions may be less personally consequential, but you still want the answers: Does that quarterback mean it this time when he says he's not coming back next season? ¶ 18 Is that politician being truthful when she says she's not going to run for president? Imagine that you were able to identify deception in response to these and the countless other questions like them that arise all around you every day-that you were successful in developing skills that take you to what we call the "spy-the-lie moment." Welcome to your new world. Houston, Floyd, Carcinero & Tennant 2012

The Pronunciation of English by Speakers of Other Languages  Jan Volin and Radek Skarnitzl INTRODUCTION  FOREIGN ACCENTS AND ENGLISH IN INTERNATIONAL CONTEXTS  JAN VOLIN AND RADEK SKARNITZL  § 0 The title of the book in which you are presently taking interest comprises notions of “pronunciation”, “English”, and “speakers of other languages”.  § 1 All three concepts deserve a little comment that can make it easier to understand the contents and the general objective of the book.  §2 The narrow meaning of the word “pronunciation” refers to the articulation of speech sounds like [i:, ɒ, s, g, m].  § 3 This popular use of the word can be a bit misleading in the field of our research. §4 The small speech segments are actually only descriptive tools reflecting what we recognize when we consciously observe and analyze spoken texts.  § 5 They are most probably neither the true building blocks of the phrases that we utter, nor the templates we use for decoding spoken messages.  § 6 Our understanding of the word pronunciation encompasses the production of stronger and weaker syllables (including their segmental features), melodies and temporal or amplitudinal attributes that make speech real in the psychological and neurophysiological sense.  § 7 An interesting justification of this stance is the term accent itself.  § 8 It is primarily motivated by the prosodic phenomenon referring to the manifestation and distribution of prominences in the speech continuum.  § 9 Groups of people share certain specific speech production features that are recognized by other groups of people as typical of the observed group.  § 10 The fact that these features fall under an umbrella term of accent and not *vowelism or *phonemia acknowledge the importance of the wider approach to speech.  § 11 In the same vein, the terms phonetics or the adjective phonetic will refer to the entire complex sound structure of speech. § 12 We find expressions like, for instance, phonetics and intonation ridiculous (a simple Google search for this exact phrase returned 41,600 results).  § 13 For a thoughtful phonetician, intonation belongs to the domain of phonetics. (Coordination of the two terms is analogous to food and apples or animals and rabbits.)  §14 English is currently the language of international communication and there are various theories why this has happened.  § 15 Instead of speculating about languages that might take over, we build on the fact that hundreds of millions of people learn English as something serviceable, something they would like to master.  § 16  To many, English is not the mother tongue. Those are the speakers of other languages in our title.  § 17 The sound of their English is influenced by the sound structures of languages they have learned beforehand.  § 18 We find these variations in the sound of English fascinating and for many practical reasons beneficial to explore and exhibit.  §19 The work on this book started during the final stages of the 4ᵗʰ international conference “English Pronunciation — Issues and Practices”, which we organised in Prague in May 2015.  § 20 More than seventy participants from four continents, with 52 presentations, manifested unusual dedication to research in the field.  § 21 We realised that besides the proceedings on a CD we should invite some of the most dedicated researchers to expand on their topics and write a book chapter that would allow for sharing their findings with wider audiences.  § 22 The peer-review process eliminated a few contributions and helped to improve the rest of them. The result is enclosed in this book.  It consists of four parts.  § 23 In Part 1 broader, more general considerations of foreign-accented speech are exposed together with analyses of learner beliefs and attitudes to pronunciation instruction.  § 24 Polish and Finnish learning environment [sic] is used to demonstrate certain issues.  § 25 The second part brings several accounts of consonantal and vocalic phenomena demonstrated on Czech, German, Korean and Portuguese accents of English.  § 26 Part 3 complements the preceding chapters with questions of speech prosody and adds Vietnamese and French-accented English.  § 27 The fourth and final part considers methodological aspects of English pronunciation learning and offers inspiring tips for classroom management, testing pronunciation skills and enhancement of the learning process.  § 28 We would like to thank all the authors for their disciplined and responsible attitude to the book preparation and the staff of the publishing house for their professional, friendly and helpful approach.  § 29 Jan Volin & Radek Skarnitzl 

How to lie with statistics Acknowledgements  The pretty little instances of bumbling and chicanery with which this book is peppered have been gathered widely and not without assistance.  § 1 Following an appeal of mine through the American Statistical Association, a number of professional statisticians — who, believe me, deplore the misuse of statistics as heartily as anyone alive — sent me items from their own collections.  § 2 These people, I guess, will be just as glad to remain nameless here. I found valuable specimens in a number of books too, primarily these:  § 3 Business Statistics, by <[Martin A. Brumbaugh]> and <[Lester S. Kellogg]>; Gauging Public Opinion, by <[Hadley Cantril]>; Graphic Presentation, by <[Willard Cope Brinton]>; Practical Business Statistics, by <[Frederick E. Croxton and Dudley J. Cowden]>; Basic Statistics, by <[George Simpson and Fritz Kafka]>: and Elementary Statistical Methods, by <[Helen M. Walker]>.  § 4 Introduction  With prospects of an end to the hallowed old British measures of inches and feet and pounds, the Gallup poll people wondered how well known its metric alternative might be.  § 5 They asked in the usual way, and learned that even among men and women who had been to a university 33 per cent had never heard of the metric system.  § 6 Then a Sunday newspaper conducted a poll of its own - and announced that 98 per cent of its readers knew about the metric system. This, the newspaper boasted, showed ‘how much more knowledgeable’ its readers were than people generally. § 7 How can two polls differ so remarkably?  Gallup interviewers had chosen, and talked to, a carefully selected cross-section of the public. The newspaper had naively, and economically, relied upon coupons clipped, filled in, and mailed in by readers.  § 8 It isn’t hard to guess that most of those readers who were unaware of the metric system had little interest in it or the coupon; and they selected themselves out of the poll by not bothering to clip and participate.  § 9 This self-selection produced, in statistical terms, a biased or unrepresentative sample of just the sort that has led, over the years, to an enormous number of misleading conclusions.  § 10 A few winters ago a dozen investigators independently reported figures on antihistamine pills. Each showed that a considerable percentage of colds cleared up after treatment. § 11 A great fuss ensued, at least in the advertisements, and a medical-product boom was on. It was based on an eternally springing hope and also on a curious refusal to look past the statistics to a fact that has been known for a long time.  § 12 As Henry G. Felsen, a humorist and no medical authority, pointed out quite a while ago, proper treatment will cure a cold in seven days, but left to itself a cold will hang on for a week. § 13 So it is with much that you read and hear. Averages and relationships and trends and graphs are not always what they seem. There may be more in them than meets the eye, and there may be a good deal less.  § 14 The secret language of statistics, so appealing in a fact-minded culture, is employed to sensationalise, inflate, confuse, and oversimplify. § 15 Statistical methods and statistical terms are necessary in reporting the mass data of social and economic trends, business conditions, ‘opinion’ polls, the census.  § 16 But without writers who use the words with honesty and understanding and readers who know what they mean, the result can only be semantic nonsense.  § 17 In popular writing on scientific matters the abused statistic is almost crowding out the picture of the white-jacketed hero labouring overtime without time-and-a-half in an ill-lit laboratory.  §18 Like the ‘little dash of powder, little pot of paint’, statistics are making many an important fact ‘look like what she ain’t’?’. A well-wrapped statistic is better than Hitler’s ‘big lie’; it misleads, yet it cannot be pinned on you. § 19 This book is a sort of primer – in ways to use statistics to deceive. It may seem altogether too much like a manual for swindiers.  §20 Perhaps I can justify it in the manner of the retired burglar whose published reminiscences amounted to a ‘ graduate course in how to pick a lock and muffle a footfall: a the crooks already know. these tricks; honest men must learn them in self-defence. Darrel Huff

How Languages Are Learned, 4th Ed, 2013 Results : Original + § № § 1 NFI : How Languages are Learned PREFACE TO THE FOURTH EDITION How Languages Are Learned (HLAL) started out as a series of professional development workshops for teachers in Quebec, Canada, where we both worked for many years. § 2 Three editions of the book have now travelled far from those origins. When we were working on the first edition in the 1980s and 1990s we were still in the early days of remarkable growth of research in second language acquisition. § 3 In updating the research for each new edition, the decisions about what to include have grown more difficult. § 4 Keeping the book to a reasonable length has often meant choosing between classics in the field and important new studies, of which there are now so many. § 5 In this edition, we have annotated some ‘Suggestions for further reading’ at the end of each chapter. § 6 We encourage readers to follow these readings and the reference list to deepen their understanding of topics that we can only introduce here. § 7 In this fourth edition of HLAL, we have added ‘Questions for reflection’ at the end of each chapter, and we have included some new ‘Activities’ that give readers opportunities to explore some of the topics. § 8 Another new feature of this edition is a companion website which contains additional activities, readings, and other web-based material and resources to enhance your reading and understanding of the contents of the book. § 9 It will also provide opportunities for readers to interact with others and to share their ideas for teaching and learning languages. § 10 ‘The website for How Languages are Learned can be accessed at www.oup.com/elt/teacher/hlal § 11 We are currently working on a new series of books for teachers, the Oxford Key Concepts for the Language Classroom. § 12 Each volume, written by a different author, will focus on a specific topic (such as assessment, content-based language teaching, literacy, and oral interaction), reviewing the relevant research and linking the findings to classroom practice. § 13 We hope that the books in this series will encourage teachers to continue learning about some of the topics that are introduced in HLAL. § 14 We hope that both new readers and those who have read the previous editions of HLAL will find ideas and information that will challenge and inspire them to make their own contributions to second language learning, teaching, and research. § 15 Patsy M. Lightbown, Harwich, MA, USA Nina Spada, Toronto, ON, Canada INTRODUCTION When new methods and textbooks for second and foreign language teaching are introduced, they are often said to be based on the latest research in psychology, linguistics, or pedagogy. § 16 Teachers are told that they will be more effective than those that have gone before. In many cases, the new approaches are prescribed for immediate implementation in a school or region. § 17 Sometimes, the new materials come with opportunities for extensive training in their implementation. Sometimes, they are simply ordered and distributed to teachers who have to do their best to use them effectively. § 18 Many approaches to language teaching have been proposed and implemented. One approach requires students to learn rules of grammar and lists of vocabulary to use in translating literary texts. § 19 Another emphasizes the value of having students imitate and practise a set of correct sentences and memorize entire dialogues. § 20 Yet another encourages ‘natural’ communication between students as they engage cooperatively in tasks or projects while using the new language. § 21 In some classrooms, the second language is used as the medium to teach subject matter, with the assumption that the language itself will be learned incidentally as students focus on the academic content. § 22 How are teachers to evaluate the potential effectiveness of different instructional practices? § 23 To be sure, the most important influence on teachers’ decisions is their own experience with previous successes or disappointments, as well as their understanding of the needs and abilities of their students. § 24 We believe that ideas drawn from research and theory in second language acquisition are also valuable in helping teachers to evaluate claims made by proponents of various language teaching methods. § 25 The goal of this book is to introduce teachers—both novice and experienced—to some of the language acquisition research that may help them not only to evaluate existing textbooks and materials but also to adapt them in ways that are more consistent with our understanding of how languages are learned. § 26 The book begins with a chapter on language learning in early childhood. This background is important because both second language research and second language teaching have been influenced by our understanding of how children acquire their first language. § 27 Several theories about first language (L1) learning are presented in this chapter and they are revisited later in the book in relation to second language (L2) learning. § 28 In Chapter 2 we look at second language learners’ developing knowledge, their ability to use that knowledge, and how this compares with L1 learning. § 29 In Chapter 3, we turn our attention to how individual learner characteristics may affect success. § 30 In Chapter 4, several theories that have been advanced to explain second language learning are presented and discussed. § 31 Chapter 5 begins with a comparison of natural and instructional environments for second language learning. § 32 We then examine some different ways in which researchers have observed and described teaching and learning practices in second language classrooms. § 33 In Chapter 6, we examine six proposals that have been made for second language teaching. § 34 Examples of research related to each of the proposals are presented, leading to a discussion of the evidence available for assessing their effectiveness. § 35 The chapter ends with a discussion of what research findings suggest about the most effective ways to teach and learn a second language in the classroom. § 36 In Chapter 7, we will provide a general summary of the book by looking at how research can inform our response to some ‘popular opinions’ about language learning and teaching that are introduced below. § 37 A Glossary provides a quick reference for a number of terms that may be new or have specific technical meanings in the context of language acquisition research. § 38 Glossary words are shown in bold letters where they first appear in the text. For readers who would like to find out more, an annotated list of suggestions for further reading is included at the end of each chapter. § 39 The Bibliography provides full reference information for the suggested readings and all the works that are referred to in the text. § 40 We have tried to present the information in a way that does not assume that readers are already familiar with research methods or theoretical issues in second language learning. § 41 Examples and case studies are included throughout the book to illustrate the research ideas. Many of the examples are taken from second language classrooms. § 42 We have also included a number of activities for readers to practise some of the techniques of observation and analysis used in the research that we review in this book. § 43 At the end of each chapter are ‘Questions for reflection’ to help readers consolidate and expand their understanding of the material. § 44 Before we begin ... It is probably true, as some have claimed, that most of us teach as we were taught or in a way that matches our ideas and preferences about how we learn. § 45 Take a moment to reflect on your views about how languages are learned and what you think this means about how they should be taught. § 46 The statements in the activity below summarize some popular opinions about language Iearning and teaching. § 47 Think about whether you agree or disagree with each opinion. Keep these statements and your reactions to them in mind as you read about current research and theory in second language learning. § 48 ACTIVITY Give your opinion on these statements Indicate the extent to which you agree with each statement by marking an X in the box associated with your opinion: SA — strongly agree / A — agree somewhat / D — disagree somewhat / SD — strongly disagree § 49 1 Languages are learned mainly through imitation. § 50 2 Parents usually correct young children when they make grammatical errors. § 51 3 Highly intelligent people are good language learners. § 52 4 The most important predictor of success in second language acquisition is motivation. § 53 5 The earlier a second language is introduced in school programmes, the greater the likelihood of success in learning. § 54 6 Most of the mistakes that second language learners make are due to interference from their first language. § 55 7 The best way to learn new vocabulary is through reading. § 56 8 It is essential for learners to be able to pronounce all the individual sounds in the second language. § 57 9 Once learners know 1,000 words and the basic structure of a language, they can easily participate in conversations with native speakers. § 58 10 Teachers should present grammatical rules one at a time, and learners should practise examples of each one before going on to another. § 59 11 Teachers should teach simple language structures before complex ones. § 60 12 Learners’ errors should be corrected as soon as they are made in order to prevent the formation of bad habits. § 61 13 Teachers should use materials that expose students only to language structures they have already been taught. § 62 14 When learners are allowed to interact freely (for example, in group or pair activities), they copy each other’s mistakes. § 63 15 Students learn what they are taught. § 64 16 Teachers should respond to students’ errors by correctly rephrasing what they have said rather than by explicitly pointing out the error. § 65 17 Students can learn both language and academic content (for example, science and history) simultaneously in classes where the subject matter is taught in their second language. § 66 18 Classrooms are good places to learn about language but not for learning how to use language. 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NFI : Introduction to the.Pronunciation of English – 1960 - 1972 FOREWORD The phonetic detail of the pronunciation of British English has already been described in several excellent works, notably those of Daniel Jones. § This present book, written after a number of years of teaching the spoken language both to English students and to foreign learners, sets out to place the phonetics of British English in a larger framework than has been customary. § For this reason, emphasis is given to the function of the spoken medium as a form of communication. § Some treatment of the historical background and the linguistic implications of the present sound system is included, as well as information concerning the acoustic nature of English sounds. § Those sections in Part II, in which detailed descriptions of the realizations of phonemes are given, deal with spelling forms, articulatory and acoustic features, variants and chief historical sources. § In addition, throughout Parts II and III, general advice to the foreign learner is included. The book is intended to serve as a general introduction to the subject which will encourage the reader to consult more specialised works on particular aspects. § Though my own views and observations intrude both in the material and in its presentation, much of the information given is derived from the numerous sources quoted in the Bibliography. § In particular, new evaluations, which seem to me to reflect more nearly the current trend of Received Pronunciation (RP) forms, are made of the phonetic characteristics of certain phonemes. § In the acoustic field, where so much remains to be investigated and where research proceeds so rapidly, an attempt has been made to sum up the results of work done in the post-war period, though many of the conclusions must as yet be regarded as tentative. § It was tempting to apply to British English a logical, elegant, and economical phonemic analysis such as is now commonplace in the United States, involving a very much simplified phonemic notation. § If this has not been done, it is mainly because a type of analysis was required which was explicit on the phonetic level as well as reasonably tidy on the phonemic level; § it seemed easier, for instance, to deal with phonetic developments and variants in terms of the largely traditional (for British English) transcription which has been used. § Throughout the book, the influence of my teachers, Professor Daniel Jones and Dr. H. N. Coustenoble, will be obvious. § To them my sincere thanks are due, not only for their teaching over the past twenty-five years but also for the example of dedication which they gave me. § My gratitude is also due to Professor D. B. Fry and all my colleagues of the Department of Phonetics, University College, London, whose brains I have constantly picked during the writing of this book. § In particular, I have valued the help of [two people], who have read sections of the book, made corrections, and suggested improvements. § I am also much indebted to Professor Randolph Quirk for his helpful comments on several points of Old English phonology. § I am most grateful, too, to Mr. J. C. Wells, who has generously allowed me to use unpublished figures resulting from his work on the formants of RP vowels. § A. C. Gimson, University College, London. December, 1961. PREFACE TO SECOND IMPRESSION A number of mistakes have been corrected in this second impression. § My grateful thanks go to all those who have pointed out errors, particularly to Mrs. H. J. Uldall and Mr. J. C. Wells for their corrections and comments, and to Mr. G. Perren of the British Council, London, who has kindly allowed me to use on p. 219 his amended figures for the English consonant frequencies. § A. C. G. November, 1963. PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION In this revised edition, a number of sections have been modified or expanded in the light of evidence which has appeared since the first publication of this book. § The changing status of RP, especially amongst young people, has necessitated the re-writing of the pages dealing with this matter, and it has seemed to me worthwhile to add a section on the current problems of the intelligibility of spoken English in the world. § The chief additions, however, are concerned with the phonotactic possibilities of English, the permissible variations in the phonemic components of English words and the frequency of occurrence of monosyllables and polysyllables in continuous speech. § Finally, the bibliography, while remaining selective, has been considerably extended. A. C. G. March, 1970.

NFI : Introduction to the.Pronunciation of English – 1960 - 1972 FOREWORD The phonetic detail of the pronunciation of British English has already been described in several excellent works, notably those of Daniel Jones. § 1 This present book, written after a number of years of teaching the spoken language both to English students and to foreign learners, sets out to place the phonetics of British English in a larger framework than has been customary. § 2 For this reason, emphasis is given to the function of the spoken medium as a form of communication. § 3 Some treatment of the historical background and the linguistic implications of the present sound system is included, as well as information concerning the acoustic nature of English sounds. § 4 Those sections in Part II, in which detailed descriptions of the realizations of phonemes are given, deal with spelling forms, articulatory and acoustic features, variants and chief historical sources. § 5 In addition, throughout Parts II and III, general advice to the foreign learner is included. The book is intended to serve as a general introduction to the subject which will encourage the reader to consult more specialised works on particular aspects. § 6 Though my own views and observations intrude both in the material and in its presentation, much of the information given is derived from the numerous sources quoted in the Bibliography. § 7 In particular, new evaluations, which seem to me to reflect more nearly the current trend of Received Pronunciation (RP) forms, are made of the phonetic characteristics of certain phonemes. § 8 In the acoustic field, where so much remains to be investigated and where research proceeds so rapidly, an attempt has been made to sum up the results of work done in the post-war period, though many of the conclusions must as yet be regarded as tentative. § 9 It was tempting to apply to British English a logical, elegant, and economical phonemic analysis such as is now commonplace in the United States, involving a very much simplified phonemic notation. § 10 If this has not been done, it is mainly because a type of analysis was required which was explicit on the phonetic level as well as reasonably tidy on the phonemic level; § 11 it seemed easier, for instance, to deal with phonetic developments and variants in terms of the largely traditional (for British English) transcription which has been used. § 12 Throughout the book, the influence of my teachers, Professor Daniel Jones and Dr. H. N. Coustenoble, will be obvious. § 13 To them my sincere thanks are due, not only for their teaching over the past twenty-five years but also for the example of dedication which they gave me. § 14 My gratitude is also due to Professor D. B. Fry and all my colleagues of the Department of Phonetics, University College, London, whose brains I have constantly picked during the writing of this book. § 15 In particular, I have valued the help of [two people], who have read sections of the book, made corrections, and suggested improvements. § 16 I am also much indebted to Professor Randolph Quirk for his helpful comments on several points of Old English phonology. § 17 I am most grateful, too, to Mr. J. C. Wells, who has generously allowed me to use unpublished figures resulting from his work on the formants of RP vowels. § 18 A. C. Gimson, University College, London. December, 1961. PREFACE TO SECOND IMPRESSION A number of mistakes have been corrected in this second impression. § 19 My grateful thanks go to all those who have pointed out errors, particularly to Mrs. H. J. Uldall and Mr. J. C. Wells for their corrections and comments, and to Mr. G. Perren of the British Council, London, who has kindly allowed me to use on p. 219 his amended figures for the English consonant frequencies. § 20 A. C. G. November, 1963. PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION In this revised edition, a number of sections have been modified or expanded in the light of evidence which has appeared since the first publication of this book. § 21 The changing status of RP, especially amongst young people, has necessitated the re-writing of the pages dealing with this matter, and it has seemed to me worthwhile to add a section on the current problems of the intelligibility of spoken English in the world. § 22 The chief additions, however, are concerned with the phonotactic possibilities of English, the permissible variations in the phonemic components of English words and the frequency of occurrence of monosyllables and polysyllables in continuous speech. § 23 Finally, the bibliography, while remaining selective, has been considerably extended. A. C. G. March, 1970.

§ 1 NFI : Introduction to the.Pronunciation of English – 1960 - 1972 FOREWORD The phonetic detail of the pronunciation of British English has already been described in several excellent works, notably those of Daniel Jones. § 2 This present book, written after a number of years of teaching the spoken language both to English students and to foreign learners, sets out to place the phonetics of British English in a larger framework than has been customary. § 3 For this reason, emphasis is given to the function of the spoken medium as a form of communication. § 4 Some treatment of the historical background and the linguistic implications of the present sound system is included, as well as information concerning the acoustic nature of English sounds. § 5 Those sections in Part II, in which detailed descriptions of the realizations of phonemes are given, deal with spelling forms, articulatory and acoustic features, variants and chief historical sources. § 6 In addition, throughout Parts II and III, general advice to the foreign learner is included. The book is intended to serve as a general introduction to the subject which will encourage the reader to consult more specialised works on particular aspects. § 7 Though my own views and observations intrude both in the material and in its presentation, much of the information given is derived from the numerous sources quoted in the Bibliography. § 8 In particular, new evaluations, which seem to me to reflect more nearly the current trend of Received Pronunciation (RP) forms, are made of the phonetic characteristics of certain phonemes. § 9 In the acoustic field, where so much remains to be investigated and where research proceeds so rapidly, an attempt has been made to sum up the results of work done in the post-war period, though many of the conclusions must as yet be regarded as tentative. § 10 It was tempting to apply to British English a logical, elegant, and economical phonemic analysis such as is now commonplace in the United States, involving a very much simplified phonemic notation. § 11 If this has not been done, it is mainly because a type of analysis was required which was explicit on the phonetic level as well as reasonably tidy on the phonemic level; § 12 it seemed easier, for instance, to deal with phonetic developments and variants in terms of the largely traditional (for British English) transcription which has been used. § 13 Throughout the book, the influence of my teachers, Professor Daniel Jones and Dr. H. N. Coustenoble, will be obvious. § 14 To them my sincere thanks are due, not only for their teaching over the past twenty-five years but also for the example of dedication which they gave me. § 15 My gratitude is also due to Professor D. B. Fry and all my colleagues of the Department of Phonetics, University College, London, whose brains I have constantly picked during the writing of this book. § 16 In particular, I have valued the help of [two people], who have read sections of the book, made corrections, and suggested improvements. § 17 I am also much indebted to Professor Randolph Quirk for his helpful comments on several points of Old English phonology. § 18 I am most grateful, too, to Mr. J. C. Wells, who has generously allowed me to use unpublished figures resulting from his work on the formants of RP vowels. § 19 A. C. Gimson, University College, London. December, 1961. PREFACE TO SECOND IMPRESSION A number of mistakes have been corrected in this second impression. § 20 My grateful thanks go to all those who have pointed out errors, particularly to Mrs. H. J. Uldall and Mr. J. C. Wells for their corrections and comments, and to Mr. G. Perren of the British Council, London, who has kindly allowed me to use on p. 219 his amended figures for the English consonant frequencies. § 21 A. C. G. November, 1963. PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION In this revised edition, a number of sections have been modified or expanded in the light of evidence which has appeared since the first publication of this book. § 22 The changing status of RP, especially amongst young people, has necessitated the re-writing of the pages dealing with this matter, and it has seemed to me worthwhile to add a section on the current problems of the intelligibility of spoken English in the world. § 23 The chief additions, however, are concerned with the phonotactic possibilities of English, the permissible variations in the phonemic components of English words and the frequency of occurrence of monosyllables and polysyllables in continuous speech. § 24 Finally, the bibliography, while remaining selective, has been considerably extended. A. C. G. March, 1970. PART I SPEECH AND LANGUAGE CHAPTER 1 COMMUNICATION 1.1 Speech § 25 One of the chief characteristics of the human being is his ability to communicate to his fellows complicated messages concerning every aspect of his activity. § 26 A man possessing the normal human faculties achieves this exchange of information mainly by means of two types of sensory stimulation, auditory and visual. § 27 The child will learn from a very early age to respond to the sounds and tunes which his elders habitually use in talking to him; and, in due course, from a need to communicate, he will himself begin to imitate the recurrent sound patterns with which he has become familar. § 28 In other words, he begins to make use of speech ; and his constant exposure to the spoken form of his own language, together with his need to convey increasingly subtle types of information, leads to a rapid acquisition of the framework of his spoken language. § 29 Nevertheless, with all the conditions in his favour, a number of years will pass before he has mastered not only the sound system used in his community but also has at his disposal a vocabulary of any extent or is entirely familiar with the syntactical arrangements in force in his language system. § 30 It is no wonder, therefore, that the learning of another language later in life, acquired artificially in brief and sporadic spells of activity and without the stimulus arising from an immediate need for communication, will tend to be tedious and rarely more than partially successful. § 31 In addition, the more firmly consolidated the basis of a first language becomes or, in other words, the later in life that a second language is begun, the more the learner will be subject to resistances and prejudices deriving from the framework of his original language. § 32 It may be said that, as we grow older, the acquisition of a new language will normally entail a great deal of conscious, analytical effort, instead of the child’s ready and facile imitation. § 33 1.2 Writing Later in life the child will be taught the conventional visual representation of speech — he will learn to use writing. § 34 To-day, in considering those languages which have long possessed a written form, we are apt to forget that the written form is originally an attempt at reflecting the spoken language and that the latter precedes the former for both the individual and the community. § 35 Indeed, in many languages, so parallel are the two forms felt to be that the written form may be responsible for changes in pronunciation or may at least tend to impose restraints upon its development. § 36 In the case of English, this sense of parallelism, rather than of derivation, may be encouraged by the obvious lack of consistent relationship between sound and spelling. § 37 A written form of English, based on the Latin alphabet, has existed for more than 1,000 years and, though the pronunciation of English has been constantly changing during this time, few basic changes of spelling have been made since the fifteenth century. § 38 The result is that written English is often an inadequate and misleading representation of the spoken language of to-day. § 39 Clearly it would be unwise, to say the least, to base our judgments concerning the spoken language on prejudices derived from the orthography. § 40 Moreover, if we are to examine the essence of the English language, we must make our approach through the spoken rather than the written form. Our primary concern will be the production, transmission, and reception of the sounds of English – in other words, the phonetics of English. § 41 1.3 Language From the moment that we abandon orthography as our starting point, it is clear that the analysis of the spoken form of English is by no means simple. § 42 Each of us uses an infinite number of different speech sounds when we speak English. § 43 Indeed, it is true to say that it is difficult to produce two sounds which are precisely identical from the point of view of instrumental measurement: two utterances by the same person of the word ‘cat’ may well show quite marked differences when measured instrumentally. § 44 Yet we are likely to say that the same sound sequence has been repeated. § 45 In fact we may hear clear and considerable differences of quality in the vowel of ‘cat’ as, for instance, in the London and Manchester pronunciations of the word; § 46 yet, though we recognize differences of vowel quality, we are likely to feel that we are dealing with a ‘ variant’ of the ‘same’ vowel. § 47 It seems, then, that we are concerned with two kinds of reality: the concrete, measurable reality of the sounds uttered, § 48 and another kind of reality, an abstraction made in our minds, which appears to reduce this infinite number of different sounds to a ‘manageable’ number of categories. § 49 In the first, concrete, approach, we are dealing with sounds in relation to speech ; at the second, abstract, level, our concern is the behaviour of sounds in a particular language. § 50 A language is a system of conventional signals used for communication by a whole community. § 51 This pattern of conventions covers a system of significant sound units (the phonemes), the inflexion and arrangement of ‘words’, and the association of meaning with words. § 52 An utterance, an act of speech, is a single concrete manifestation of the system at work. § 53 As we have seen, several utterances which are plainly different on the concrete, phonetic level may fulfil the same function, i.e. are the ‘same’, on the systematic language level. § 54 It is important in any analysis of spoken language to keep this distinction in mind and we shall later be considering in some detail how this dual approach to the utterance is to be made. § 55 It is not, however, always possible or desirable to keep the two levels of analysis entirely separate : thus, as we shall see, we will draw upon our knowledge of the linguistically significant units § 56 to help us in determining how the speech continuum shall be divided up on the concrete, phonetic level ; and again, our classification of linguistic units will be helped by our knowledge of their phonetic features. 1.4 Redundancy Finally, it is well to remember that, although the sound system of our spoken language serves us primarily as a medium of communication, its efficiency as such an instrument of communication does not depend upon the perfect production and reception of every single element of speech. § 57 A speaker will, in almost any utterance, provide the listener with far more cues than he needs for easy comprehension. § 58 In the first place, the situation, or context, will itself delimit very largely the purport of an utterance. § 59 Thus, in any discussion about a zoo, involving a statement such as ‘We saw the lions and tigers’, we are predisposed by the context to understand ‘lions’, even though the n is omitted and the word actually said is ‘liars’. § 60 Or again, we are conditioned by grammatical probabilities, so that a particular sound may lose much of its significance, § 61 e.g. in the phrase ‘These men are working’, the quality of the vowel in ‘men’ is not as vitally important for deciding whether it is a question of ‘men’ or ‘man’ as it would be if the word were said in isolation, since here the plurality is determined in addition by the demonstrative adjective preceding ‘men’ and the verb form following. § 62 Then again, there are particular probabilities in every language as to the different combinations of sounds which will occur. § 63 Thus in English, if we hear an initial ‘th’ sound [ð], we expect a vowel to follow, and of the vowels some are much more likely than the others. § 64 We distinguish such sequences as ‘-gl’ and ‘-dl’ in final positions, e.g. in ‘beagle’ and ‘beadle’ ; but this distinction is not relevant initially, so that even though ‘dloves’ is said, we understand ‘gloves’. § 65 Or again, the total rhythmic shape of a word may provide an important cue to its recognition : § 66 thus, in a word such as ‘become’, the general rhythmic pattern may be said to contribute as much to the recognition of the word as the precise quality of the vowel in the first, weakly accented syllable. § 67 Indeed, we may come to doubt the relative importance of vowels as a help to intelligibility, since we can replace our twenty English vowels by the single vowel [ə] in any utterance and still, if the rhythmic pattern is kept, retain a high degree of intelligibility. § 68 An utterance, therefore, will provide a large complex of cues for the listener to interpret, but a great deal of this information will be unnecessary, or redundant, as far as the listener’s needs are concerned. § 69 On the other hand, such an over-proliferation of cues will serve to offset any disturbance such as noise or to counteract the sound quality divergences which may exist between speakers of two dialects of the same language. § 70 But to insist, for instance, upon exaggerated articulation in order to achieve clarity may well be to go beyond the requirements of speech as a means of communication ; § 71 indeed, certain obscurations of quality are, and have been for many centuries, characteristic of English. § 72 Aesthetic judgments on speech, such as those which deplore the use of the ‘intrusive’ r, take into account social considerations of a somewhat different order from those involved in a study of speech as communication. § 73 1.5 Phonetics and Linguistics This book is primarily concerned with the sound system of English and it is proper, as we have seen, that phonetic and phonemic analysis should occupy an important place in the study of any language. § 74 Indeed, when it is a question of a language which is being subjected for the first time to scientific analysis, it is necessary that some statement of the sound system should be made at the very outset, so that a notation can be devised for the recording of the language in a written form. § 1 NFI : Introduction to the.Pronunciation of English – 1960 - 1972 FOREWORD The phonetic detail of the pronunciation of British English has already been described in several excellent works, notably those of Daniel Jones. § 2 This present book, written after a number of years of teaching the spoken language both to English students and to foreign learners, sets out to place the phonetics of British English in a larger framework than has been customary. § 3 For this reason, emphasis is given to the function of the spoken medium as a form of communication. § 4 Some treatment of the historical background and the linguistic implications of the present sound system is included, as well as information concerning the acoustic nature of English sounds. § 5 Those sections in Part II, in which detailed descriptions of the realizations of phonemes are given, deal with spelling forms, articulatory and acoustic features, variants and chief historical sources. § 6 In addition, throughout Parts II and III, general advice to the foreign learner is included. The book is intended to serve as a general introduction to the subject which will encourage the reader to consult more specialised works on particular aspects. § 7 Though my own views and observations intrude both in the material and in its presentation, much of the information given is derived from the numerous sources quoted in the Bibliography. § 8 In particular, new evaluations, which seem to me to reflect more nearly the current trend of Received Pronunciation (RP) forms, are made of the phonetic characteristics of certain phonemes. § 9 In the acoustic field, where so much remains to be investigated and where research proceeds so rapidly, an attempt has been made to sum up the results of work done in the post-war period, though many of the conclusions must as yet be regarded as tentative. § 10 It was tempting to apply to British English a logical, elegant, and economical phonemic analysis such as is now commonplace in the United States, involving a very much simplified phonemic notation. § 11 If this has not been done, it is mainly because a type of analysis was required which was explicit on the phonetic level as well as reasonably tidy on the phonemic level; § 12 it seemed easier, for instance, to deal with phonetic developments and variants in terms of the largely traditional (for British English) transcription which has been used. § 13 Throughout the book, the influence of my teachers, Professor Daniel Jones and Dr. H. N. Coustenoble, will be obvious. § 14 To them my sincere thanks are due, not only for their teaching over the past twenty-five years but also for the example of dedication which they gave me. § 15 My gratitude is also due to Professor D. B. Fry and all my colleagues of the Department of Phonetics, University College, London, whose brains I have constantly picked during the writing of this book. § 16 In particular, I have valued the help of [two people], who have read sections of the book, made corrections, and suggested improvements. § 17 I am also much indebted to Professor Randolph Quirk for his helpful comments on several points of Old English phonology. § 18 I am most grateful, too, to Mr. J. C. Wells, who has generously allowed me to use unpublished figures resulting from his work on the formants of RP vowels. § 19 A. C. Gimson, University College, London. December, 1961. PREFACE TO SECOND IMPRESSION A number of mistakes have been corrected in this second impression. § 20 My grateful thanks go to all those who have pointed out errors, particularly to Mrs. H. J. Uldall and Mr. J. C. Wells for their corrections and comments, and to Mr. G. Perren of the British Council, London, who has kindly allowed me to use on p. 219 his amended figures for the English consonant frequencies. § 21 A. C. G. November, 1963. PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION In this revised edition, a number of sections have been modified or expanded in the light of evidence which has appeared since the first publication of this book. § 22 The changing status of RP, especially amongst young people, has necessitated the re-writing of the pages dealing with this matter, and it has seemed to me worthwhile to add a section on the current problems of the intelligibility of spoken English in the world. § 23 The chief additions, however, are concerned with the phonotactic possibilities of English, the permissible variations in the phonemic components of English words and the frequency of occurrence of monosyllables and polysyllables in continuous speech. § 24 Finally, the bibliography, while remaining selective, has been considerably extended. A. C. G. March, 1970. PART I SPEECH AND LANGUAGE CHAPTER 1 COMMUNICATION 1.1 Speech § 25 One of the chief characteristics of the human being is his ability to communicate to his fellows complicated messages concerning every aspect of his activity. § 26 A man possessing the normal human faculties achieves this exchange of information mainly by means of two types of sensory stimulation, auditory and visual. § 27 The child will learn from a very early age to respond to the sounds and tunes which his elders habitually use in talking to him; and, in due course, from a need to communicate, he will himself begin to imitate the recurrent sound patterns with which he has become familar. § 28 In other words, he begins to make use of speech ; and his constant exposure to the spoken form of his own language, together with his need to convey increasingly subtle types of information, leads to a rapid acquisition of the framework of his spoken language. § 29 Nevertheless, with all the conditions in his favour, a number of years will pass before he has mastered not only the sound system used in his community but also has at his disposal a vocabulary of any extent or is entirely familiar with the syntactical arrangements in force in his language system. § 30 It is no wonder, therefore, that the learning of another language later in life, acquired artificially in brief and sporadic spells of activity and without the stimulus arising from an immediate need for communication, will tend to be tedious and rarely more than partially successful. § 31 In addition, the more firmly consolidated the basis of a first language becomes or, in other words, the later in life that a second language is begun, the more the learner will be subject to resistances and prejudices deriving from the framework of his original language. § 32 It may be said that, as we grow older, the acquisition of a new language will normally entail a great deal of conscious, analytical effort, instead of the child’s ready and facile imitation. § 33 1.2 Writing Later in life the child will be taught the conventional visual representation of speech — he will learn to use writing. § 34 To-day, in considering those languages which have long possessed a written form, we are apt to forget that the written form is originally an attempt at reflecting the spoken language and that the latter precedes the former for both the individual and the community. § 35 Indeed, in many languages, so parallel are the two forms felt to be that the written form may be responsible for changes in pronunciation or may at least tend to impose restraints upon its development. § 36 In the case of English, this sense of parallelism, rather than of derivation, may be encouraged by the obvious lack of consistent relationship between sound and spelling. § 37 A written form of English, based on the Latin alphabet, has existed for more than 1,000 years and, though the pronunciation of English has been constantly changing during this time, few basic changes of spelling have been made since the fifteenth century. § 38 The result is that written English is often an inadequate and misleading representation of the spoken language of to-day. § 39 Clearly it would be unwise, to say the least, to base our judgments concerning the spoken language on prejudices derived from the orthography. § 40 Moreover, if we are to examine the essence of the English language, we must make our approach through the spoken rather than the written form. Our primary concern will be the production, transmission, and reception of the sounds of English – in other words, the phonetics of English. § 41 1.3 Language From the moment that we abandon orthography as our starting point, it is clear that the analysis of the spoken form of English is by no means simple. § 42 Each of us uses an infinite number of different speech sounds when we speak English. § 43 Indeed, it is true to say that it is difficult to produce two sounds which are precisely identical from the point of view of instrumental measurement: two utterances by the same person of the word ‘cat’ may well show quite marked differences when measured instrumentally. § 44 Yet we are likely to say that the same sound sequence has been repeated. § 45 In fact we may hear clear and considerable differences of quality in the vowel of ‘cat’ as, for instance, in the London and Manchester pronunciations of the word; § 46 yet, though we recognize differences of vowel quality, we are likely to feel that we are dealing with a ‘ variant’ of the ‘same’ vowel. § 47 It seems, then, that we are concerned with two kinds of reality: the concrete, measurable reality of the sounds uttered, § 48 and another kind of reality, an abstraction made in our minds, which appears to reduce this infinite number of different sounds to a ‘manageable’ number of categories. § 49 In the first, concrete, approach, we are dealing with sounds in relation to speech ; at the second, abstract, level, our concern is the behaviour of sounds in a particular language. § 50 A language is a system of conventional signals used for communication by a whole community. § 51 This pattern of conventions covers a system of significant sound units (the phonemes), the inflexion and arrangement of ‘words’, and the association of meaning with words. § 52 An utterance, an act of speech, is a single concrete manifestation of the system at work. § 53 As we have seen, several utterances which are plainly different on the concrete, phonetic level may fulfil the same function, i.e. are the ‘same’, on the systematic language level. § 54 It is important in any analysis of spoken language to keep this distinction in mind and we shall later be considering in some detail how this dual approach to the utterance is to be made. § 55 It is not, however, always possible or desirable to keep the two levels of analysis entirely separate : thus, as we shall see, we will draw upon our knowledge of the linguistically significant units § 56 to help us in determining how the speech continuum shall be divided up on the concrete, phonetic level ; and again, our classification of linguistic units will be helped by our knowledge of their phonetic features. 1.4 Redundancy Finally, it is well to remember that, although the sound system of our spoken language serves us primarily as a medium of communication, its efficiency as such an instrument of communication does not depend upon the perfect production and reception of every single element of speech. § 57 A speaker will, in almost any utterance, provide the listener with far more cues than he needs for easy comprehension. § 58 In the first place, the situation, or context, will itself delimit very largely the purport of an utterance. § 59 Thus, in any discussion about a zoo, involving a statement such as ‘We saw the lions and tigers’, we are predisposed by the context to understand ‘lions’, even though the n is omitted and the word actually said is ‘liars’. § 60 Or again, we are conditioned by grammatical probabilities, so that a particular sound may lose much of its significance, § 61 e.g. in the phrase ‘These men are working’, the quality of the vowel in ‘men’ is not as vitally important for deciding whether it is a question of ‘men’ or ‘man’ as it would be if the word were said in isolation, since here the plurality is determined in addition by the demonstrative adjective preceding ‘men’ and the verb form following. § 62 Then again, there are particular probabilities in every language as to the different combinations of sounds which will occur. § 63 Thus in English, if we hear an initial ‘th’ sound [ð], we expect a vowel to follow, and of the vowels some are much more likely than the others. § 64 We distinguish such sequences as ‘-gl’ and ‘-dl’ in final positions, e.g. in ‘beagle’ and ‘beadle’ ; but this distinction is not relevant initially, so that even though ‘dloves’ is said, we understand ‘gloves’. § 65 Or again, the total rhythmic shape of a word may provide an important cue to its recognition : § 66 thus, in a word such as ‘become’, the general rhythmic pattern may be said to contribute as much to the recognition of the word as the precise quality of the vowel in the first, weakly accented syllable. § 67 Indeed, we may come to doubt the relative importance of vowels as a help to intelligibility, since we can replace our twenty English vowels by the single vowel [ə] in any utterance and still, if the rhythmic pattern is kept, retain a high degree of intelligibility. § 68 An utterance, therefore, will provide a large complex of cues for the listener to interpret, but a great deal of this information will be unnecessary, or redundant, as far as the listener’s needs are concerned. § 69 On the other hand, such an over-proliferation of cues will serve to offset any disturbance such as noise or to counteract the sound quality divergences which may exist between speakers of two dialects of the same language. § 70 But to insist, for instance, upon exaggerated articulation in order to achieve clarity may well be to go beyond the requirements of speech as a means of communication ; § 71 indeed, certain obscurations of quality are, and have been for many centuries, characteristic of English. § 72 Aesthetic judgments on speech, such as those which deplore the use of the ‘intrusive’ r, take into account social considerations of a somewhat different order from those involved in a study of speech as communication. § 73 1.5 Phonetics and Linguistics This book is primarily concerned with the sound system of English and it is proper, as we have seen, that phonetic and phonemic analysis should occupy an important place in the study of any language. § 74 Indeed, when it is a question of a language which is being subjected for the first time to scientific analysis, it is necessary that some statement of the sound system should be made at the very outset, so that a notation can be devised for the recording of the language in a written form.